The Hand and the Cloth
by xeyes
Summary: Henry tells the story of the longest day of his life. M for the usual SH themes. In the end, only one question remains...what now?
1. Prologue

**Henry's story. The great thing about Henry is that he is what you see in him...here's my version. This gets an M for the usual SH reasons, along with minor language and a few moments of suggestiveness.**

**Don't own the characters or the locations, although a lot of what goes on in Henry's head (and some of what goes on in Walter's universes) is my own invention.**

* * *

I know why you're here. You want to know what the hell happened. You know that what was in the papers and on the news is only half of the story, and you want the truth. Same as everyone else. Well, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I only know what I saw. If you want all the answers, you've come to the wrong place.

I'm sorry…that's too harsh. To be fair, where else are you going to go? There's nobody left who would know more than I would, I guess. So, it's fine. You being here. I'm glad you're here, actually. Hell, I need to tell somebody anyway. It works out for both of us.

Come on, Henry. Get on with it.

Where do I begin? I don't know where or when it all started…

I guess I should start by telling you who I am, even though you probably know already. Hello. My name is Henry Townshend, and I'm...heh. I'm not sure how to complete that, actually. Whatever. It doesn't matter. I don't have to figure that out just yet. It can wait.

But this isn't about me anyway. Well, it is, in that I'm the one telling the story, and I was the one who was there. This isn't really my story, though. I'm not the reason for all of this. He was, and this is all about him...and the hell he nearly raised. Still, I suppose you're going to be seeing it through my eyes. You have to consider the viewpoint as well as the subject…the angle, the light, the environment, all of that. So, I'll get the boring background stuff about me out of the way so that you can understand better whose eyes you're borrowing.

Gruesome image? I haven't even gotten started. But I'm rambling again.

I'm twenty-eight years old, and I have an apartment in South Ashfield. Room 302, South Ashfield Heights. But you know that, too. What else? Um...I'm a photographer, which in my case means that I make enough to pay the bills and eat a good meal out every now and then, and little else. That's never bothered me much...when you love what you do, the other things aren't important. At least, they weren't before. I've lived in Ashfield all of my life, except for four years at Pleasant River University just down the road. Got out of there with my B.F.A. in Photography, which made Mom very happy and made Dad give up on me completely.

I guess it's going to be relevant, so I may as well mention it here. I...I'm not a people person. Heh. Not by a long shot. Just your average introverted child of a semi-broken home. Dad left when I was in high school, because I wasn't going to make sergeant in his lifetime (or mine, either), never mind general. I don't talk to Mom much for various reasons that are really nobody's business but mine. You understand. Or maybe you don't. It doesn't matter. The reason I bring this up is to explain...well, some of the reactions I had later. You'll see. Social life…yeah, right. Love life...none to speak of. I briefly dated a woman named Leslie in my junior year of college and...well, that's all you need to know for now. Ordinary guy, ordinary life.

Oh, and I'm a crappy storyteller. Never was able to tell a joke well, still can't. So you can blame somebody else for the content (most of it, anyway), but the way it's laid out and told is all my fault. I'm talking off of the top of my head. If I had any choice in the matter, I'd sit down with the results when it was all done and red-pen things just like I do for Widmark, and shape it as best I could, but even then it wouldn't have that flair, that flow that really good stories have. Cut me some slack...I don't do much with words except read them and copy-edit short blurbs about local attractions. I've never written about anything like this.

Bet that just makes you want to keep going, doesn't it?

God, do I have to do this?

Yeah, I do. Not for you, though. For me. Like I said, I need to tell _somebody_. You're as good a candidate as any, so here you are. And here I am. So let's do this.

I almost forgot…there's one more thing. I'm a very different person now from who I was then. I'll try to keep that out of it, but if some of my reactions or whatever don't sound like you'd expect…that's because that wasn't the Henry who's writing this. That was the old Henry…and even then, things changed quickly for me. You'll see.

Come on. Stop stalling. You're not one for long-winded _anything._ This isn't about you anyway. There's a story to be told. Get on with it.

Fine. As Eileen would say, here goes.


	2. Room 302

Ever have a really bad headache? The kind that lasts for days and won't let you see straight? The kind that won't let you read anything more involved than the back of a cereal box and that keeps you from sleeping soundly? No? Good for you. Up until five days before, I could have said the same thing. Clean bill of health, apart from an old knee injury that only bothers me a few times per year.

But five days before all hell broke loose, I started having these really weird nightmares. One of them was the same every night. I was in my room, but it wasn't like I remembered it. The walls were all bloody and rusty, with cobwebs everywhere. And I had a headache, too, really bad, even worse than the one I had during the day. The doors were sealed shut, and the windows were stuck, too. Some of the pictures on the walls were different, and I didn't recognize some of the stuff in the apartment. But thinking about it now, those things were mine…the TV, the radio, all of that, but I didn't recognize them in the dream. It wasn't as if somebody else was living in my apartment, or even as if I was in somebody else's place. It was like I _was_ somebody else.

Before I go further, I should probably tell you about my apartment, since it plays a big part in the story. My place has a pretty simple layout. When you go in the front door, the kitchen is to the left, separated from the front area by a little L-shaped counter. There's a refrigerator, a sink, and a stove, and cabinets, the usual kitchen stuff. On the right is the door to the laundry room, which has a washer, dryer and some shelves for storage where I keep boxes and tools and things. I don't go in there much except to do the laundry. If you walk up to the edge of the kitchen counter, you're facing the front room, which has the TV, the bookshelf, and a couch and chairs and tables, and two windows opposite the door. On the right is the hallway, which ends with a bathroom on the right and my bedroom on the left. The bathroom is a sink, a shower with a tub (not a stall shower), a toilet, and some shelves, and the bedroom is…a bedroom, but also with a desk and chair and chest of drawers. I spend most of my time at home between the desk, the bed and the front room couch. Simple enough. It's all I need, and I was happy there.

In my dream, all of the doors but the bedroom door were shut and sealed…so much that the edges were hard to see, and the baseboard extended all the way across them, like they were melting into the wall. Even the front door. There was no way out. What there _was_ was a strange growth on the opposite wall, above the cabinet by the couch. It was a series of bumps that looked a lot like a face. Its mouth was open, but I couldn't tell if it was yelling or screaming or yawning. I remember spending a while just looking at it, trying to figure out if it was real. It almost seemed to move a couple of times, but I think it was just a trick of the light.

Then, after I'd started back down the hall, I heard an unfamiliar noise behind me. It was a growling, or maybe a roar, with a squishing thrown in. I turned around to see somebody crawling out of my wall. No, really. Out of the wall, right where the face-shaped bumps had been. It was a guy in a long, ragged, dark sweater, with no hair and…well, I didn't know how to describe it at the time, but he looked like a ghost. Not the sheet-over-the-head Halloween kind of ghost…he looked like someone who had been dead for a while. His skin was white and papery and flaking off of him like dried fish. He was pulling himself through the wall, and when he got far enough through he flopped to the floor and started crawling toward me.

I tried to back away, but I tripped over my own feet and fell hard. The closer he got, the worse my head hurt, and the redder my vision got. Before I could get up, he knocked over one of the kitchen stools, onto my chest, and crawled on top of it, pinning me down. I was nearly blind from the pain by then, and he was all that I could see. He bent over me, leering at me, and I could smell the death on him…

…and then I would wake up. There were other nightmares, long, involved ones, but I don't remember them in much detail, not right now. They've been coming back to me, piece by piece, but I don't have them back yet, not really. Not enough to talk about here, anyway. Just that one. It was the same thing every night...no matter what, it would always end up the same way.

That was the least of my concerns after a while, though. Not everything in the nightmare was just in my head. The front door and windows really wouldn't open, and the TV and phone were really dead. I had no way of getting out of my place. I'd tried everything I could think of. I even threw a chair at the window, but it just bounced back at me. Nothing worked. It got to the point where every time I heard somebody walk by the front door, I'd pound on it and scream at the top of my lungs to let me out...or I would have if I'd had any voice left. After a day or two, I really didn't. It was as if they couldn't hear me, as if I was stuck in my own little universe in there.

At first, I didn't mind. It's funny…I actually welcomed it, in a way. The phone still worked for the first couple of days, so I left Frank a message asking him to look at the door and had a nice day in…well, apart from the headache. After that, though…

What are the five stages of grief? I don't remember how that's supposed to work. Ends up at acceptance, right? In this case, "acceptance" was more like "dead tired". After a couple of days, I knew the nightmares were coming every night. Not only was I tired because of being unable to get back to sleep after the nightmares, I was having trouble getting to sleep in the first place. I think I slept about two or three hours those last few nights. I'd given up trying to get out after a few days, so there wasn't much to do but stare at the walls. I'd also run out of food on the last day…nothing was left but an old bottle of wine and a single brown plastic bottle of chocolate milk, neither of which would keep me going for long (although the bottle of wine was definitely beckoning by then).

So that's how I'd been living up to the start of the main event. Don't get me wrong, though…that's a quick summary, but those were some of the longest days of my life. There was nothing to do after a while but think, and as much as I used to wish I had more time to do just that, by the last morning I'd thought myself into a hell of a mess. Nothing made sense any more, and the more I tried to figure things out, the more confused I got. I knew that somebody was behind all of it – had to be – but I couldn't come up with a single reason _why_.

Finally, late in the evening of the fourth day, I just gave up trying completely. Whatever was going to happen…was going to happen. _Bring it on_, I thought. _One way or another. End this._

* * *

Day five dawned bright and overcast. By "dawned", I mean that I woke up sometime in late morning. I'm a night person, and left to my own devices I go to bed very late and get up very late…and that morning, I was groggier than I could remember being in a long time. Still, I managed to remember to try the phone, like I did every morning. Hope springs eternal, I guess. There was no dial tone, no static, not even an off-the-hook beep. Nothing at all. Same as the day before, and the day before that, and the day before that… 

Then, it rang. _It rang!_ I was still groggy, and I almost twisted my knee hurrying back for it...then, I nearly dropped the receiver when I got it to my ear.

"Help…me…"

It was a woman's voice, a young woman's, with a slight lilt to it. Were other people somehow able to call in when I couldn't call out? Who'd be calling me, anyway? Nobody ever called me except about work. Maybe there was something wrong with the wiring…a broken wire, or something. I lifted up the phone to have a look, in case something had wiggled loose.

_No, the plug looks OK..._

Something was flapping around just out of the corner of my eye. It was the phone cord, cut cleanly after about a foot or so, dangling limply. I stared at it dumbly for a second or two. Then, the line went dead.

_You know, every time something happens, I end up with more questions than answers. _That had become my mantra over the last few days. I was too damn tired to panic, or to worry about how that cord managed to get cut, or how the call had gone through on a disconnected phone in the first place. I just put the phone back down and sat there for a moment, trying to push the headache back down to a manageable level. I tried this every morning, too, but with no luck. This morning, however, it was different…maybe the ringing of the phone had worked something loose. Or something. The headache actually receded a little bit this time.

The windows were still stuck, of course. Everything outside looked just the same, though…same last-gasp-of-summer heat, I guessed. Well, as long as the air conditioning didn't give out, I'd be OK. Thermally, anyway.

There was a flash of color off to the right. A young woman was wandering back and forth by the entrance to the subway station on the corner. She was dressed in a low-cut red top and what looked like a short striped skirt, with her dark hair up. Looked as though she was waiting for someone. She meandered for several seconds, then tossed her head and walked down the steps into the subway. Well, at that time of year, it wasn't unusual to see women wearing skimpy clothing, with the heat and the humidity that we get in Ashfield. Anyway, she was gone now.

I wandered down the hall. Nothing much new out front...TV dead, windows still wouldn't open…same magazine on the table…yeah, same old same old. Oh well. My stomach didn't feel empty, but I knew that it should, that I should be beyond ravenous by now, and all I had was that chocolate milk and a single bottle of cheap white wine. The wine had been calling to me, like I said, and I figured that perhaps a little bit might take the edge off. Not like I had anything better to do.

As I turned to the kitchen, my eye caught something out of the ordinary by the door. I must have blinked a couple of times before I realized that it wasn't a dream or a delusion or anything. There was a web of heavy metal chains crisscrossing my door. Several lengths of chain were threaded through thick metal loops nailed haphazardly to the door, and to the wall around it. Plain square brass key-locks held the chains tightly in place. The door had been firmly stuck before, but now it really wasn't going anywhere…and neither was I. Whoever had done this wanted to make sure of that.

_Whoever had done this…there's gotta be somebody in here. _There was no question about that. But where could he (or she) hide? Nowhere. My apartment isn't that big, and I don't have a lot of furniture or other large objects in it. It would take about thirty seconds to search the place top to bottom for anything as big as a human, and there was no way that somebody could move around without being heard. Certainly, there was no way that all of these chains and locks could be mounted on my front door in the middle of the night without me hearing it, ten or twelve feet away in bed and sleeping rarely if at all. So it was impossible. But then, it was also impossible that a heavy upholstered chair should bounce back off of ordinary window glass, as it had on the second day, so "impossible" hadn't been a sticking point for me for a while now.

Then, red letters appeared just below the peephole, and "impossible" shifted over to "possible, and definitely happening".

_Dont go out!  
Walter_

Walter? Who's Walter? I didn't know anybody named Walter…

The chains were cold under my fingers, and very, very real. I pulled and tugged a little, but they were too tightly fastened to move. Whoever was behind this had done a thorough job of it. The chains and locks looked old, like they'd been in somebody's garage for years, but they were strong and in good shape. I wasn't going to be able to get through these any time soon.

Something crashed in the hallway outside, so I put my eye to the peephole. There was my next-door neighbor, Eileen, who had lived in 303 since before I moved in. I didn't know Eileen, just nodded and smiled in the hallway, but she struck me as a nice person, kinda quiet, and pretty in an unobtrusive way. Really, a very girl-next-door type, which was exactly what she was to me. The girl next door. She had a paper bag from the grocery store down the street in her arm and was picking things up off of the floor. Guess she'd spilled some stuff out of the bag. She was muttering to herself, and I smiled a little as I heard her cursing mildly under her breath. A nice person, maybe, but not _too_ squeaky clean.

It had been a while since I'd seen anybody through the peephole, and I admit that I drank in the sight of her, creepy as it sounds. As she stooped and lifted, I wondered why she'd been passing my door, anyway. Her apartment was closer to the stairs than mine, and the hallway led only to 301. The guy in 301…well, he's not the kind that gets dates readily. Or friends, I'd guess. Then again, neither am I. So why...

She stiffened suddenly, and stood up, as if she'd heard something. I listened, but I hadn't heard anything, either. Then, she was staring straight at my door with a weird look on her face.

"Oh man," she said, and her shoulders dropped just a little. "Hope my luck changes before the party."

She headed back to her room, still muttering under her breath. Guess she had plans for the evening. Wish I had. Plans that didn't involve me sitting in my apartment staring at the walls, anyway…

…and after she had passed out of sight, I turned my eyes back to see something strange on the hallway wall. The wall was usually a plain, dingy off-white color, but now it had…handprints on it. Not as if somebody had been standing there, leaning against the wall, though. The prints were deliberate, like a prehistoric rock painting or something. They were different sizes, lined up neatly in rows. I took a moment to count them. There were fifteen of them…and as I stared at them, I realized that they were a dark red color, like the color of old blood, almost the same color as the writing on my door.

_Those definitely weren't there the last time I looked. What kind of sick joke is this? _

They unnerved me more than they should have. No reason to keep staring at them, anyway.

There was something white stuck under the door. It was a white piece of paper, folded and slightly crumpled, with words written in a childlike scrawl.

_ Mom, why doesn't u Wake up?_

Huh. It wouldn't have fallen out of Eileen's grocery bag and slid under the door; it would have taken some effort to force the note through the narrow crack. Maybe it was from the person who'd chained up the place…this Walter guy. But why wouldn't he have left it in a more obvious place, like the kitchen counter or something? Anyway, the handwriting didn't match the mental image I had of somebody who could put up those chains. No kid could have done that. It didn't make sense.

As I leaned back against the chains, reading the note and wondering where it had come from (and feeling the sharp edges of the locks poking me through my shirt), I saw that there was something else stuck behind the bookshelf by my window. One of the shelves had an annoying habit of falling off of its supports every now and then, so my first thought was that it had slipped again and dumped some stuff into the bookshelf. Wouldn't have been the first time. Then, I saw that all the shelves were still in place, and that the thing was wedged behind the whole bookshelf, not just stuck in a corner. _Somebody_ had placed it there. Two guesses who.

The paper was heavy and old. It crackled in my fingers.

_ Through the Ritual of the Holy Assumption, he built a world.  
It exists in a space separate from the world of our Lord.  
More accurately, it is within, yet without the Lord's world.  
Unlike the world of our Lord, it is a world in extreme flux.  
Unexpected doors or walls, moving floors, odd creatures, a world only he can control...  
Anyone swallowed up by that world will live there for eternity, undying.  
They will haunt that realm as a spirit.  
How can our Lord forgive such an abomination...?_

I didn't remember having any books like this. I read historical biographies, books about photography, random magazines, odd stuff off of the bargain tables at the local bookstores, and the occasional mystery novel (a guilty pleasure), but weird religious writings were not my thing. This was a piece of just such a book, though, and it was dirty and worn as if it had been through hell and back for decades. Parts of it were completely illegible.

_...It is important to travel lightly in that world.  
He who carries too heavy a burden will regret it..._

The legible part stopped there. Whatever, I thought. Didn't really apply to me anyway. None of it did. There weren't any weird doors or walls or anything here. The only unexpected things, apart from the chains, weren't things that were there that weren't supposed to be, if that makes any sense…it was things that weren't there that should be. I _should_ have cable TV, a working phone, and windows and doors that would open, and a clear head as well, but none of those were present any more. As for too heavy a burden…I didn't even have my wallet on me. So this was nonsense for now.

I ended up sitting on my old storage chest, leaning against the wall. The chest was vintage and wooden, about the size of a footlocker, and had served as storage and seating for me since I was little. It looked deceptively small, but held a lot of stuff when it had to. When I was in college, I'd kept my whole life in it, and all I had to do to move out of my dorm room at the end of each year was throw everything into it and roll it down the hallway. Nowadays, I kept my photography supplies in it, but even then it was rarely more than half full. But as I bent forward to stand up, I heard something shift inside the chest, and the thought entered my mind that maybe whoever was doing all of this had somehow managed to hide in there. It was the one place big enough to hold a (small) person that I hadn't looked in. Remember, I wasn't thinking too clearly by this point, so I'd forgotten to look during that thirty-second search I mentioned earlier. So, I cracked it open and peered inside…and found nothing but the usual bottles and boxes and stuff.

_Of course there's nobody in there. Get a grip, Townshend. You're alone in here. Don't delude yourself into thinking you're not._

I lowered the lid and ran my fingers over the old wood for a moment, lost in thought…and nearly jumped out of my skin when a loud crash echoed down the hallway. I stood frozen for a second or two before I realized that the sound had come from the bathroom, and that the secondary smaller noises had probably been the bottles by the sink falling to the floor and breaking. Maybe the mirror had fallen off of the wall over the sink or something. Great, just what I needed. A bathroom full of tiny shards of broken glass…and seven years of bad luck from a broken mirror. Not that I was superstitious or anything, but still…I'd have to be careful in there. I'm a details person (you have to be, in my job), and I knew I'd have to inspect everything to see what had changed and what, if anything, I could do about it. The last thing I needed then was for some small problem, like a leaking water pipe, to be overlooked and have a chance to grow into a big problem. Every little thing might be important, you know.

Man, I was such a tool back then...

As soon as I opened the door, I knew that the bottles weren't to blame. They were still right where they were supposed to be, as were the ones in the shower. The long glass shelf under the mirror had fallen on the right, though, and the right side of the mirror was missing, but the rest of the mirror was still on the wall. The whole side of the countertop was gone, shattered into pieces on the floor, and the towel bar was also in pieces. Right where the towel bar had been was an enormous round hole in the wall. It was a few feet across and very deep and black, and was at least several feet long. I stepped carefully around the tile debris on the floor (which had just barely missed the toilet, thank God…another few inches to the right and I would have had a helluva flooding problem, probably) and peered in. I couldn't see the other end.

"Is somebody in there?" I called down the hole, but all that came out was a wobbly whisper.

_Pull it together, Townshend! Think! It looks as though whoever did this tunneled in from the other side…the only stuff on the floor came from your walls, not from inside this rock and dirt..._

…_rock and dirt? This is the third floor of an apartment building, not the Gulag. There isn't any rock and dirt up here. Hell, down that way should be Room 301's bathroom or something, not yards and yards of gray dirt…_

Whatever. There seemed to be no immediate danger from the hole. It was as if the wall had been blasted into the room from the other side…that must have been what took out the counter and the mirror and the shelf. I couldn't see what was at the other end, if anything. It should have been 301, of course, but then there were a lot of things that _should_ have been that weren't, so that was meaningless. For example, that bent metal pipe that was partly blocking the end of the hole should have been spewing hot or cold water all over the place, but it just sat there.

There was nobody in the hole…so who had done this? Was…was it somebody trying to get into my apartment? I had no idea why anybody would want to, or why they would be doing it the hard way, through a wall. But whoever had done this had managed to blow through the wall. If so, then he (or she) was probably hiding _in my apartment._ Where? Nobody behind the shower curtain, and nobody had come down the hallway, so he'd have to be…in the bedroom, maybe? Trying to…to do _what?_ _Why?_

Then the obvious thought finally penetrated my fuzzy brain. If I was at one end of the hole, and there was something at the other end…then I might be able to use the tunnel to get to that other end. Out of my apartment. To…well, whatever was on the other side. Whatever it was. God only knew what the guy in 301 had been doing in there. Dropping in on him unannounced hadn't been on my list of things to do in this lifetime, but it seemed like my only option right now. And, it would get me the hell away from whoever was trying to…

_But what if it's just a dead end? Then you're stuck deep at the end of a narrow dark tunnel, and you're a sitting duck for whatever that person wants to…_

_Maybe. But it's a risk I'm going to have to take._

The tunnel looked just wide enough to climb through, but I'd have to move that piece of pipe first. A brief tug showed that it was still attached at the top end. I wrapped both hands around it, put my foot against the wall for leverage, gritted my teeth, and _pulled_. Next thing I knew, I was flying backwards and nearly braining myself on the edge of the tub as the pipe popped easily out of the wall and fell on top of me with a rattle and a clank. It was completely dry inside…and hadn't been fastened in there very sturdily at all. A probable casualty of the hole. But, it felt cold and heavy and good in my hands, and it occurred to me that if the guy in 301 gave me any trouble, it might not be a bad idea to have a little something handy to help drive my point home. Verbally! I didn't plan on actually _using_ the thing. I took a deep breath, tucked the pipe into a belt loop, and pulled myself into the hole.

The hole itself stretched before me, a lot longer than I'd anticipated. There were sharp little rocks poking out of the walls here and there, and I had to be careful to not rip out the knees of my jeans just crawling through. The dirt smelled old and musty, and as I moved through it bit by bit, I found myself having a little trouble breathing. But, it didn't go on forever, and as I approached the other side the light grew and grew until it blinded me…


	3. South Ashfield Station 1

_MMMMMM…_

...sleepy...there was something…droning…loud...

_MMMMM..._

Something mechanical…metallic…a motor…mechanical smell.

…_mmmmmm…_

…quieter now. I was moving. Downward...and I seemed to be waking up.

…_waking up?_

The glint of metal greeted my tired eyes.

_Had I been asleep? Must have been…that was why the sound seemed so loud…_

After a moment, I realized that I was sitting on an escalator. I could see the brushed metal walls on either side of me, and the grooves in the steps were deep under my fingertips...and this damn grogginess wouldn't let me go.

_Wake up, Townshend. Before you get caught in the bottom of those steps._

That did the trick. I was wide awake. The floor stretched gray far below me, getting closer with each passing moment. A single light was suspended over the bottom of the escalator, which was a good ways off. Standing up could wait. I had a little time to survey my surroundings and figure out where I was.

Yes, I was on an escalator, but it was unlike any I'd seen before. It descended from blackness downward…by itself. Escalators usually come in pairs, right? Either side by side, parallel, one up and one down, or crossing from opposite directions in a great X like in a department store. Well, this one was all by itself.

As I looked around, I sensed something familiar about my surroundings. Wherever it was, it was all gray. Gray everywhere, with enormous pipes and ducts and cables and valves running up the tall walls. I couldn't see the ceiling, couldn't even see where the walls ended…they stretched upwards into blackness. This was some sort of industrial building, probably. An area not meant for public use. The escalator walls were covered with years of grime, so keeping things presentable wasn't a priority. I smelled metal and dirt and grease…and it was a little cold, too.

Where was I, anyway? And why would anybody put something as convenient for moving people, but so useless for anything else, in a place like this? Why not an elevator or a ramp or steps or something? Yeah, my brain was working overtime, going in all different directions. But, when you haven't been out of your apartment for days and you're suddenly in a place that you've never seen before and things don't make a lot of sense, what else are you going to do but try to figure out what's going on?

But like I said, it didn't make any sense. None at all. And I was still dead tired. At least I hadn't taken that swig from the wine bottle. I needed my senses about me, and they were dulled enough to start with that every little bit of sobriety I could muster up was going to help. That, I _did_ know.

"…what the hell?" I asked nobody in particular. Vocabulary's the first thing to go when you're as zoned out as I was. Nobody answered me, of course. So I stayed where I was and waited for the floor to rise up to meet me. When I finally reached the bottom of the escalator, I still had no idea where I was. But at least now I could see more of it.

Wherever this place was, it didn't look very safe. No, not in the way that things became unsafe later. There was something just…wrong about it. The concrete floor looked ordinary, as did the pipes and everything else. There was scaffolding against the walls, as if the hallway was being repaired or remodeled. But it didn't look like any construction I'd seen before. There were no tools or dropcloths or debris or anything, like there should have been…well, there _was_ debris, in the form of large chunks of concrete lying on the floor. No dust or nails, either, just the scaffolding. That was strange enough, but what struck me the most were the walls. They were dirty and misshapen, with bumps and ripples, almost as if they had been distorted by water or something.

_But concrete doesn't do that…and it doesn't look like drywall, either._

Everything was very dirty and gray. Even the ceiling, which was crisscrossed with smaller pipes and wires, was covered with years of grime. And why was it so dark? There were fluorescent lights, but their glow was faint. No, nothing made any sense yet.

Well, enough of that, I thought. Nowhere to go but forward. Hopefully, I'd find some answers there.

I didn't have to go far. Before me stretched a long hallway that looked more familiar with every step. Even before I reached the light from the side corridor that was beckoning to me, I knew where I was. The sign hanging from the ceiling told me clearly.

_South Ashfield_

I was in a subway station. Come to think of it, it was looking more and more like the one outside my building every moment, too. The escalator was a new addition, though. I was sure of that. I'd explored this station one day when I had a few hours to kill, looking for interesting images and angles. I'd found very little, but I remembered its layout well. If I was where I thought I was, this area was usually an exit with stairs that led to the corner outside my apartment building. But somebody had put in a one-way escalator instead.

The light led me down a small service corridor. The doors at the end were both locked tight. I read the papers on the little bulletin board, but they had nothing of interest to tell me. Just basic subway informational stuff. Maybe they would have been more meaningful if I'd been able to get through those service doors, but nothing doing. As I walked back down the corridor, something caught my eye on the opposite wall. It was a large round projection with a handle on the end, like a manhole cover in the wall. It was also firmly stuck closed. Granted, I'm no Hercules, but this thing wasn't going to open for _anybody_ any time soon. It was completely useless. And why was it there, anyway?

_This does look like my station…but a lot has changed from what I remember, and none of the changes make any sense. Maybe…maybe I'm dreaming. I did wake up on an escalator…so I'd been asleep before…maybe I'm still asleep. Yeah. That's gotta be it. I'm asleep in that hole in my bathroom. _

_Or maybe that was all a dream, too? Who knows. Let's go with the "dream" idea for now and see what happens._

There was a faint noise from several feet away. Looking up, I realized just how tired I really was. A woman was standing in the corridor, facing away from me, looking around in confusion. She wore a red see-through top over a black bra, and a short skirt with horizontal stripes and patterns. Her long dark hair was clipped up to the back of her head. She shifted from one red high heel to the other, uncomfortably. It was definitely the woman I'd seen entering the subway just a few minutes before.

Yeah, I was dead tired. How else could I have missed seeing _her?_

She turned as I walked toward her. That's when I saw…_whoa_. Golden skin, a shade or two darker than mine, and a figure that would stop any guy in his tracks. The bottom of her short skirt edged upward on one side, showing much more thigh than I felt comfortable looking at. Her eyes, though, were what really struck me. They were a deep amber color, like the last leaves of fall that drop when all of the others have sucked the life from the trees and leave only brown behind.

_Just like Leslie's. God, I loved her eyes. And the rest was gorgeous, too. Too bad about the inside. She laughed when I told her that exact thing about the leaves. "You're funny," she said, which I guess was redundant at the time. "You artsy types, always thinking in pictures. For a guy as tongue-tied as you, you come up with some weird comparisons sometimes."_

_Sheesh. You're welcome. I didn't say anything. That was as far as I'd ever been able to let myself go, the biggest risk I'd taken…and that was what I got. She was like that, so it wasn't a surprise after a while. But it was worth it, all of it was. Or it seemed like it, just to be able to touch her and see her smile at me and to lose myself in those eyes…_

And those eyes – these eyes, _now_ – were looking me up and down like…oh.

_Is she…_

_No. She doesn't seem like a…working girl. A party girl, maybe._

_Watch out!_ my mind said. _She wants something._

_And you owe it to yourself to find out what she wants_, said another voice. _One way or another. This is the first person who's seen you in five days. The least you can do is talk to her._

"Who are _you_?" she asked. There was a slight accent to her voice. Latina, probably. She put a finger to her mouth, and smiled at me in _that_ way.

_Man, it's been a long time since I saw anything like that…directed at me._

"What's your name?"

Her question jolted me out of my thoughts. "Henry," I said automatically.

_Bad move,_ I thought a moment too late. _You shouldn't tell her your real name. You don't know…_

Whatever. Too late. The cat was out of the bag. I shrugged. "And you?"

She laughed, a sound that echoed musically down the empty gray corridor. "This is _my _dream, and you don't even know my name? It's Cynthia." She smiled, revealing two rows of small, perfectly white teeth. Her voice rose and fell rhythmically as she spoke.

_Cynthia_. Unusual, but nice. It fit her somehow. But the word _dream_ stuck.

_Maybe this **is** a dream after all. But...**her** dream?_

"Your dream?" I blurted.

"That's right." That smile again, and a laugh. "This is just a dream. And a really terrible one, too," she said with conviction, looking around. I did the same. "I hope I wake up soon."

But my damn tired brain just couldn't get past that one idea. It grabbed hold of it and shook it around like a dog with a bone. "So you think this is a dream, huh?"

She laughed again and shrugged. "Well," she said, "if it's not a dream…what is it?"

_Good question._

"Anyway," she continued, "I want to get out of here, but…I can't find the exit."

There should have been one where I came in, but it was gone. Maybe…maybe she'd had the same problem. Maybe she'd woken up on that escalator, too, and wasn't familiar with the station. But it had been several minutes, at least, and she would have walked past the turnstiles to the other exits…maybe those didn't exist any more either…

This was getting to be too much. I had to figure out what was going on _now_, before anything else happened. If this is a dream, I thought, then none of the usual rules apply. On the other hand, I'm safe, right? I can't get killed in a dream.

…_wait. What was it I heard? That urban legend. If you die in your dream, then you die in real life. But I've had dreams in which I was dying, and I was fine afterward. Shaken, but fine. Now that I think about it, though…I never actually did die there. I always woke up first. So I wouldn't know. And if this isn't a dream…then from what I've seen the rules don't apply here, either. Except, maybe I **can** die. Nothing makes sense…it's like a dream, but it feels much more real._

I found myself staring back down the corridor. The escalator was still running in the distance...and my mind was running in circles.

A footstep echoed behind me. "Say," she said, and a hand touched my shoulder and turned me around to face her.

She was close. _Very_ close. _That_ close. I was suddenly acutely conscious of my wrinkled shirt and my ratty hair and several-days' stubble, and what was probably very ripe breath.

_Danger!_

I knew better, but I couldn't make my feet move backwards. I was rooted to the ground, staring at her like an idiot. Her skin and hair smelled like vanilla. A tiny hand hovered in front of my chest, and a single red fingernail dragged along my shirt. "Will you help me find it?"

_Sure, yeah, I'll…find…what?_

My lips flapped, but nothing came out. Her other hand came up and rested lightly on the pocket of my shirt. All I could do was stare into those amber eyes and swallow hard and _not_ look downward at the expanse of smooth golden flesh that hovered below them. Perhaps I was Hercules, after all. I had to be to keep my eyes out of trouble just then. Nah. Probably not.

"I'm kinda scared all alone," she said in a little-girl voice. Her thick red lips curved into a smile. I knew that I was being worked, worked in a way that had been old when Cleopatra was young and hadn't changed over the eons because it still did _work_. And I didn't mind at all. I didn't mind much of anything at that moment…my brain had frozen at the touch of that fingernail. Probably couldn't have told you my own name just then. I'd short-circuited in the worst way.

Then, that nail left my chest and came up to my face.

"I'll do a..."

_Do what?_

"…special _favor_. For you. Later."

The finger touched the corner of my mouth, lightly. The snakes of her eyebrows lifted slightly, and the smile widened.

_Guh. _

I could hear Leslie's voice in the back of my mind. _You guys are all the same,_ she'd said once. I didn't believe her when she said it, but I believed her now…a second after my paralysis gave way and I lurched forward involuntarily, instinctively, dirty hands be damned. All that got me was a laugh and a smile as she turned and walked slowly away, skirt moving from side to side and up and down…and all I could do was stand there, mouth gaping, as she waggled – I'm sorry, but, yes, she _waggled_ – away slowly. "It's just a dream, so I might as well have some fun," she said to the walls.

I let out the breath that I'd been holding (I hadn't been aware of it until just then) and the world came back into focus around me.

_Some fun. Well, it's my own damn fault. Leslie was right. But Leslie was not Cynthia._

* * *

There was nothing left to do but to plow forward. Cynthia and I were the only two people here as far as I knew, and our chances of getting out of this were better if we stayed together. She followed me down the corridor wordlessly. I didn't have to worry about losing her...the _clack, clack_ of her heels echoed sharply down the hall behind me. Yes, now I knew where we were. We were almost at the turnstiles. Just past those would be the other set of exits. There should be bathrooms coming up on the left soon. Good. I needed to wash the escalator grime off of my hands...and get my head straight. 

"Wait a minute," came Cynthia's voice from behind me. This time it wasn't seductive or coquettish…it was pained. She was bending over, one hand on her stomach and the other over her mouth, like something was wrong. Like her stomach hurt. Like she had to…

"I think…I'm gonna puke."

She wobbled, but before I could get to her she stumbled to the door of the women's restroom and nearly fell inside. The door swung closed, and I was alone again.

So I did what every guy is supposed to do in that situation. I stood in the middle of the hallway and waited. I had to. I couldn't go into the men's to wash up, in case she came out and thought I'd left her behind. All was quiet; either that door was blocking a lot of sound or she'd managed to collect herself. I was worried, of course, abstractly, but I didn't have any concrete _reason_ to go in to check on her. Hell, she wasn't even going to need someone to hold her hair…it was up on her head already. Anyway, there are few places more off-limits to the adult male than the women's bathroom. Not that there were any subway cops in range to arrest me, but still…it had been drilled into me for as long as I could remember. You don't go into a woman's handbag and you don't go into the women's bathroom. Even with permission. You just don't.

After a minute or two had passed with no sign of Cynthia, I walked over to the opposite wall, leaned back against it, and settled in for a long wait. I turned to read the papers on the bulletin board behind me, but they were just posters for shows and ads for apartments for rent and furniture for sale and all that. Nothing photography-related, I noted. Although, if what Jeff had told me years ago was right, that drum kit for sale was probably a pretty nice one…but I definitely wasn't in the market for a set of drums. Not only would the neighbors come after me, but I didn't have the space for them. Or the talent.

So, I waited.

And waited.

And waited some more.

_I know women take longer in the bathroom, but this is ridiculous,_ I thought some minutes later. I actually had no idea how long it had been. There was no clock in the corridor, and my watch had died the previous day, so I hadn't bothered to put it on when I woke up.

_It's because of the line in there, my mother used to tell me. But it's very unlikely that there's any line in there right now._

I tilted my head back, took a deep breath, and steeled myself to boldly go where no man had gone before. I had no alternative, it seemed. For all I knew, she could be dying in there or something. Well, maybe not _dying_, but still...

The door of the men's room started to open, slowly, with a _creeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeak_. Seriously, that's how long it seemed to take. For a second or two, nothing happened. I was just standing there, staring at the half-open door. Then, something large came flying out with a roar and landed heavily at my feet. It was a…_dog?_ No, not a dog. This..._thing _was shaped like a dog, but it was green and red and splotchy. As it writhed on the floor, I saw that its skin was just patches of ratty fur and raw flesh, oozing and bleeding. A long snakelike red tongue hung out of its mouth. It just lay there, panting, making no attempt to stand up. I'd never seen anything like it in my life.

Before I could move, two more appeared. They sauntered out of the door and toward their companion. As the first one lay there, breathing heavily, they sniffed it from head to toe. Then, suddenly, their heads lifted up, their long tongues stiffened, and before my eyes they drilled those tongues into the body on the floor. The dog spasmed for a moment or two, screaming, then slumped. A slurping sound came from the two animals as they bent over their friend. I couldn't believe my eyes.

_Jesus…what is this? What are these…monsters? Like nothing I've ever seen before...like a nightmare or something..._

_Oh my God, are they going to come after me next?_

My mind raced in circles. The two things were occupied at the moment, but that wouldn't last…what would happen then? Were there more in the women's bathroom? And what about…oh God, what about Cynthia? I'd forgotten about her completely. Was she OK?

_I've got no choice. I have to kill them somehow. If I move, they'll see me, and chances are they like live meat better than dead meat. I can't run into the bathroom, because if there are more in there I'll be trapped between them. I have to kill these now, while they're busy…_

What did I have on me? What could I use against them? I was unarmed. I hadn't even brought my wallet with me. I had nothing, nothing but my hands and…_the steel pipe._ Granted, it wasn't going to do much, but smacking them with the hard, heavy pipe might at least buy me some time until I figured out something better. It was crappy, yeah, but it was all I had. I knew in my gut that if I ran for it, they'd come after me, and God only knew if there were more of them by the turnstiles. If there were, I wouldn't stand a chance.

Yeah, I wasn't thinking very clearly just then. One moron with minimal weapons training and a few feet of water pipe against two hellhounds _should_ equal gruesome and painful death…but I didn't know what else I could do. So, I pulled the pipe from my belt, wrapped my hands firmly around the straight end and circled around the things until I faced their rear ends. A deep breath, a tightening of the fingers, and I swung for the back of the nearest one. I guess I figured that if I could break its back somehow, it would fall down and then I could beat the hell out of it. Or something. I don't really know what I was thinking, if anything. Anyway, fool's luck kicked in, and there was this wet _crunch _and the thing screamed and dropped to the floor. It twitched its huge, bloody feet, and its head lay by the toe of my boot.

…_my boot…_

Without thinking, I raised my knee as high as I could, and slammed my foot down onto its skull. There was a sickening crunch and a squish, then my foot was back down on the floor and the beast's brains were all over my boot. Lesson learned. _If I can knock the other one down…I can crush its head._

Knocking it down would be the challenge, though, as instead of two happily distracted cannibalistic doggies I now had one that was focused squarely on taking me out. It was crouching several feet away, snarling and growling. I could feel its eyes on my throat. Suddenly, it leapt for me, and it was all I could do to swivel aside just in time. It flew past me, leaving behind a stench that would raise the dead, and I found myself staring at its mangy butt. Thank God. The pipe crashed through its spine, and a stomp ended the immediate threat. I was left breathless and shaking in a hallway with three dead hellhounds lying in spreading puddles of thick brownish-red blood. It occurred to me as I tried to collect myself that for all the times I had wished I could get out of my apartment over the last few days, if I'd known that I was going to face this, I would have stayed happily in there indefinitely.

Weenie.

_Cynthia!_

It all came rushing back at that moment. I readied myself for hellhound teeth or righteous female ire (terrifying prospects, both), and strode through the door.

To nothing. The room was empty of life. Just stalls and sinks, like the men's room but in a mirror-image and with no urinals. No hellhounds, no cockroaches, plenty of mold but not much dirt. And no Cynthia. What there was, though, was a huge round hole in the wall, about four feet across and cut roughly through the concrete. It was ringed in red, double rings with some sort of runes or something in between. Beyond lay a dark tunnel. There was no light at the end. This made no sense. I mean, more than usual. The hole was in the wall to the corridor. I _knew_ that there couldn't be a deep, dark tunnel beyond…there was no way I could have missed a four-foot-wide round tunnel, the walls of which would have completely blocked the way I'd just come.

No way. No goddamn way.

But this seemed to be the only way that Cynthia could have left the bathroom. Maybe it was the way out. So I hauled myself up into the hole and steeled myself for another long crawl. Instead, once I was a few feet inside, I felt a pressure behind me, and before I knew it I was swooshing down the tunnel like a capsule in one of those old-fashioned pneumatic tubes the local bank had in its drive-through lanes. I pulled myself into a ball to keep from hitting the walls, but my ride was smooth, and impact-free…

I must have blacked out seconds later.


	4. South Ashfield Station 2

…soft…familiar…safe…warm…

_Huh?_

My eyes opened more readily this time. I was in the last place I'd expected to end up…on my bed. _My_ bed. Fully dressed, and now struggling into consciousness.

_How the hell did I end up in my own bed, of all places?_

Then I remembered about the subway station and the dogs and Cynthia. Not surprisingly, there was no sign of her in my bedroom. Probably would have been much more surprising if she _had_ been there. So, it had to have been a dream. Everything. How else could I have gone from waking up that morning in my own bed to waking up on an escalator in a subway station to waking up in my bed again? It all had to have been a dream. The holes, the chains on my door, all of it.

But, it seemed so real…

Or, maybe…could it be…

Whatever sleep I'd had hadn't made me feel any more rested. My brain was still tiredly worrying the idea of _dream_ just like before. "Was I really inside that woman's dream?" I asked myself. Was all of that really Cynthia's dream? Had I somehow managed to enter her consciousness…

No. That was too much to swallow. Hearing it out loud just emphasized that. "That's just stupid," I said, as if it would wash away the memory of that crazy idea. Didn't work, of course. The idea still hung in the air, stale and heavy.

"What was I thinking?"

_Very little_. If everything – _everything_ – had been a dream, then I must have dreamt seeing Cynthia enter the station, and everything that followed. If I had just made her up in my own head, then it was no wonder that we'd seen the same things, right? It was all just my dream. _After all, Henry, you've written entire books in your dreams that you couldn't remember when you woke up. What's it to you to make up some insanely attractive and strangely attainable woman who comes on to you in a deserted place…and promptly blows you off and pukes in the bathroom after…yeah, leave it to you to wuss out on that opportunity. Even in your dreams._

Oh well.

But, I knew that my doors and windows being stuck shut were _not_ part of that dream. I went out front to check on the door. Yep, still shut…and the chains were there, along with the blood-red writing from that morning. That changed things…a lot.

_So, I didn't dream up the chains. I saw them around the same time I first saw Cynthia. Does that mean…_

_What **does** it mean?_

One of the pictures on the cabinet had fallen. As I went over to set it back up, I saw that the whole cabinet had been pulled away from the wall, while I was out. By whom? The same person who was leaving me pieces of paper and knocking impossible holes in my bathroom wall? Was this somebody's idea of a joke? If so, it was one hell of a complex and pointless joke. That cabinet had sat in that corner since I'd moved in, right next to the couch. Nothing else had changed from earlier. If I'd wanted to freak out somebody, I'd have done more than just move a cabinet, I can tell you that.

I shrugged. Might as well put it back. Of course, on the rough carpet, it wouldn't just slide straight backward. I wedged my arms into the gap between the cabinet and the wall by the stove, pushed it backwards and to the side, flush against the wall, and stepped back to pull it sideways into place…and found myself facing a huge gouge in the wall behind where the cabinet had stood until a few minutes ago. The sheetrock (_sheetrock? Man, this place is well-built_) was chipped and cut, cratered, as if somebody had been trying to hack his or her way through. Of more immediate interest was the pistol lying on the floor just in front of the hole.

_That's…serendipitous._

Never thought I'd pick up a gun again. Not since my father had tried all those years ago to make me learn how to handle them. Training for my future career, that was the idea. He did everything he could to make me learn to clean a pistol and disassemble a rifle…and failed miserably. Failed, just as I'd failed with his old revolver during mandatory shooting-range time. "You're going to have to learn this sooner or later," he told me then. "Whether you like it or not." He always wore his old uniform jacket for those sessions, as if that would help. He shouldn't have bothered. All he'd succeeded in doing with all that was making his only son swear off of firearms of any type.

But here I was, and there it was. Shiny, but slightly dusty, as if it had been there for years. Who knows…it probably had. But the contours were familiar, and my hands knew what to do even when my brain rebelled. I bent and picked it up. It was fully loaded. Its weight was familiar, if not welcome. But…

_You have no choice, Henry. You have to defend yourself somehow. It's the steel pipe, or this. Even if you only have a few bullets…they're better than nothing. And if you run into any more of those dog things, you're going to need it. Get over it._

I can see them more clearly now, the assumptions that I was making. I was assuming that I'd have to go back to the dream-subway, that I'd need to fight off more demon dogs…and that somehow, a gun that I'd found in my apartment while I was awake would be helpful in my dreams. I have no idea why I thought that. Of course, I'm glad I did. Still, it's interesting…probably never would have occurred to me a week before.

I balanced the pistol and weighed it on my palm. It felt good in my hand. Then, I saw myself as if in a mirror, pistol in one hand, pipe in the other, and somehow that helped me realize that no, this was _not_ a dream, and that I'd probably need both. I hate to admit it, but having cold metal weapons in both hands helped clear my head. The wine could wait for later. I needed this, now.

There was something carved into the wall to the left of the hole, between me and the stove.

_The faint hope I had is slowly changing to despair.  
I've somehow managed to tunnel this far,  
but no matter what I do, I can't get any farther.  
The hallway, the windows, the walls…  
It feels like this room is stuck in another dimension.  
Eileen never noticed…_

_Who the hell is reading my mind?_

Seriously, that's what I thought. Whoever had carved this here had known _exactly_ what I'd been thinking over the last few days. It _was_ just like this room had been stuck in another dimension. Nobody had heard me or seen me, no matter how loud I yelled or how hard I pounded on the wall. Not even Eileen. But there wasn't anybody here except me – and maybe, whoever was playing these weird tricks on me – so, the only person who could have done this was me. But, this cabinet had been in that same place since before I'd moved in…so it _couldn't_ have been me…and wouldn't you think I would remember doing something like that?

There was a tiny little point of light deep in the gouge in the wall. If not for the shadow of the surrounding hole, I'd never have seen it. But it shone…and flickered. Maybe whoever had dug the hole had gotten all the way through.

_Which means that on the other side of that wall is…_

_No. You can't._

_What if…what if I can yell to her through it? Maybe she will hear me if there's nothing blocking me._

_You CAN'T._

If handbags and bathrooms were way off limits, doing this would guarantee my eternal damnation. But for once, my conscience lost the fight. I put my hands against the wall and peered through the hole. There was Eileen, sitting on her bed, in the same clothes she'd worn earlier. She was looking for something, it seemed. Her head turned back and forth as she frowned. "Where did I put that damn broom?"

I smiled. _You mean, the one right in front of me here?_ Its handle leaned against the side of a cabinet or something just to the left of the hole. Then, I remembered why I was there in the first place.

"Eileen!" I yelled. Her head turned toward the hole, and she was staring straight at me. She had to be.

"Eileen! It's Henry!" My throat hurt from yelling that loud.

"Oh. There it is," she said. She stood and walked toward me.

"I'm stuck in here! Help!" She was only a few inches away from me…she _had_ to be able to hear me!

Her hand reached for the broom. It lifted into the air, and she turned and walked out of the room. I was left staring at her well-worn bedspread, assorted dresses and things hanging in her cabinet, and some aggressively ugly wallpaper…even her stuffed Robbie the Rabbit (_ugh_) was ignoring me. I felt more alone at that moment than I had since all of this started. Then, I remembered. Of course…she was going to clean up the mess from the groceries she'd dropped. She couldn't hear me. Nobody could. Move along, Henry. Nothing to see here.

…_she can't hear you or see you. You don't exist to her. She has no idea…_

…the phone was ringing. Ringing! I shot down the hallway and grabbed the receiver. But as soon as I heard the voice on the other end, I wished to God that I hadn't.

She was out of breath. "Where did you go?" That lilting voice was desperate now. "Hurry! Save me!"

I pushed all of the other questions out of my mind. _Save you? How can I? I don't even know where you are…_

"If you need a token, there's one here…"

And the line went dead.

_A token? She must still be in the subway, then. Somewhere. Somehow._

What else could I do but go back through the hole? This time, I didn't have to crawl…I was carried along like before. It felt a little less strange now.

* * *

I came to on the floor of the women's bathroom again. When I stood up, I remembered that I'd wanted to wash my hands earlier…I'd forgotten to back home, and I really needed to now. From the looks of this place, it had been a while since the cleaning crew had ventured into here. God only knew what was on the floor underneath me. But before I could cross the room to the sinks, the life-size white mannequin perched in the middle stall grabbed my attention. It was as white as porcelain (well, whiter than the porcelain in _this_ bathroom, anyway), and looked exactly like Cynthia. The shape, the hair, the clothes were the same. Even the stripes on her skirt were incised into the material. Its mouth was open in a large _O_, and its hand was extended to me. The only color in the room was the bright red blood on that hand, and on the other one. I knew that it was blood without even touching it. I'll admit it…I freaked out a little bit, inside. 

Something glinted in its hand. Resting on the palm in the blood were a few round coins with holes in the middle. Subway tokens. _She wasn't kidding…there really are tokens here._ Why wasn't I surprised at that?

I pocketed the tokens and exited the bathroom. The men's room was empty, as well, of life or mannequins or anything but the usual fixtures. Fortunately, the water was running normally in the sinks, and the roll of paper towels above them was still in usable shape. Normally, I'm nowhere near this obsessive about cleanliness, as one glance at my apartment will tell you…not by a long shot. Down here, somehow, the dirt felt _pervasive_, and I wanted to keep it at bay for as long as possible.

The hallway outside was still quiet. The dogs were still dead. Their blood was starting to congeal on the cold concrete floor. And Cynthia was still nowhere to be found. So, on to the turnstiles. But first…I gripped my pipe in both hands and swung at the dead dog on the floor in front of me, paying attention to every part of the process. The pipe moved more quickly than I'd expected for its length and weight, and connected with a satisfying _crunch_. It was easier to practice on dead targets than live ones, you see, and I wanted to make sure that I was ready for whatever was coming my way. Couldn't worry about it, couldn't think about the fact that I was beating the corpses of undead monsters to a pulp in a deserted subway. At least, that's what I _thought_ was going on.

God, what a sick bastard I was going to be by the end of this…whenever that was.

Sick, in stages. The next stage was prowling by the Lynch Street Line ticket office. Just one of them, fortunately. I could only hear one. At least I was better prepared this time. I lifted the pipe and moved forward as quietly as I could…

Have you ever swatted a fly or a moth or whatever out of midair? It's the weirdest feeling of accomplishment, like you beat it at its own game. Like you've somehow won something more than the lack of annoying buzz two feet away. Well, imagine knocking the life out of a large undead dog as it jumps for your throat, and you have that feeling ten times over. Then, there's a wet crunch when you break its back, and a wetter one when you plant your foot through its brains. Two. That's all it takes…

…But it attacked _me_ first, sir!

Is that really any defense? Maybe. I don't know. I couldn't worry about it at the time. Well, I chose not to, anyway. Was I enjoying this? I couldn't worry about that, either. No time to worry about anything but finding a way out of this place, and I'd have to slaughter whatever got in my way without a second thought.

Sick, sick, _sick_ bastard.

* * *

The turnstiles looked familiar, but different. Somehow, everything seemed older than I remembered. Older, but younger. Makes perfect sense, huh? What I mean is that the token machines, the phones, all of it…it all still looked dirty, like the rest, but the actual _machines_ themselves were old-fashioned. The electronic ticket machines that I remembered, with the little screens and credit-card slots and everything, were gone, and the ones in their place were older. The phones, too, were of a previous generation. Almost like they would have been ten or fifteen years ago, or even twenty. Older, but cleaner and less worn, as if they hadn't been in service more than a few years. They looked kinda like they did when I was little, holding my mother's hand in my local subway station. Not that my parents took me on the subway much when I was small…but in junior high and high school, I rode it all the time, and things looked like they did here back then, too. 

These definitely weren't like the ones in the stations now. No. The phones, machines, everything was newer these days, if only a little less dirty. I hadn't seen a token machine like these in years. Not since I'd gone to college, for sure. They looked neglected, not old.

Why where these old machines here? Not much point in asking, since no answers seemed to be forthcoming. Still, I remembered how to work these old beasts…not that that had ever been a real challenge, of course. I had tokens now, but just for shits and giggles I started punching the buttons on one vintage, battered dinosaur. Nothing happened, of course, since I hadn't put any money in, but even the buttons themselves didn't seem to be making any noise. It was as if the machine was completely dead. I tried the next one, and then the next. All of them seemed to be nonfunctional. Strange. Wonder if…

_The phones!_

There were still green lights on above most of the phones. The heavy old phone receivers were familiar, but the lack of dial tone was almost haunting in the quiet. Of course, the phones didn't work. There was a strange sort of logic emerging from this place, slowly, and of _course_ the phones weren't going to work…not here. The last receiver still settled back on its rest with a _click_, though. Guess that hadn't changed.

Somewhere further down the corridor, I heard a slight scuffling sound, and then another. I didn't have to ask what was causing it. There were two of them. The sounds echoed down the hallway. They weren't very close by, but still…I'd better see if I can get to them before they find _me._ So, off I went.

There was a long…_thing_ stretching down the hallway. It came out of the wall on the right, past the maintenance entrance, and meandered thickly down the corridor before disappearing up the right-hand exit steps. It was a few feet thick, veined all along in red and purple and blue, and _man_ that sounds obscene to describe now, and I would have felt a little embarrassed about it if I'd realized that then, but at the time it didn't seem that way at all. It was just…_alive_, and it sat there throbbing and thumping and squirming.

But first, I had to deal with the two dogs. There was no way that I could take them both out at once, I knew that. They were faster than I was. But perhaps I could switch between them, one at a time. So, pipe up, stealth mode _on_. I prepped myself for a monster swing when the moment was right. They stopped and stared at me, then crouched, ready to spring. No…not yet…a little more…_now!_

_**WHAM**!_ Two for one! Damn, that pipe was good. They flew out of the air and landed several feet away. I ran to the first one I hit, got a good angle on it, and planted my boot through its skull. Then, I turned to face the second…which connected with my leg before I could see it coming. Its teeth sank into my thigh through my jeans. I stared at it in shock for a second, into its sightless eyes staring back up at me and its decomposing jaws wrapped around my leg. The blinding pain followed a moment later.

_God DAMN it!_

I swung without thinking. Next thing I knew, it was down, and I swore loudly as the pain shot through my raised thigh and my boot did its work. Immediate threat eliminated. But before I could deal with my leg, I had to make sure that there were no others around. I hobbled down the hallway as fast as I could.

Both sets of stairs were blocked, which was pretty much what I'd expected. After all, if it was _that_ easy to get out of here, then what was the point of this whole exercise, right? No exits. But there was a small red box sitting past the other end of the throbbing worm-thing. Its label was almost unreadable under all the dirt. But it was a familiar kind of heavy in my hand, and it slid open readily like a matchbox. Inside were…

_I don't believe it. Bullets. _

Then, I remembered the handgun hanging idly at my waist, tucked into my belt, and laughed just for the sheer hell of it. Would have been useful thirty seconds ago…but of course, I'd forgotten about it. _Don't do **that** again, dumbass._ I pulled it out and compared its bullets to those in the box. They were identical. I now had the ability to reload.

_And I know that I'm going to use it._

My thigh still hurt like hell, though, so it was time to head back to my place through that weird Hole. Maybe I could patch myself up a little before I tried out those tokens of Cynthia's. I just hoped that the smell of blood wouldn't attract any more unwanted attention on the way there. The corridor stretched long and gray before me, but I had no choice.

* * *

Back in bed again. Well, at least _that_ was turning out to be predictable. The pain in my leg kicked in then, and stopped any additional musing. I needed to get up and figure out how to fix myself up _now_. 

Eileen was still sweeping in the hallway. She must have really made a mess out there. Now, where was that damn first-aid kit that I kept stashed around here somewhere for…well, who knows what. I hadn't actually used it since that assignment a few years ago, the one that sent me into the woods by the Silent Hill side of Ashfield. I'd had to patch up a few cuts and scrapes, nothing major, and when I got back I'd restocked it and put it _somewhere_ safe and now I couldn't find it. At least my leg wasn't bleeding too badly…and it didn't hurt as much for whatever reason. Still, that was a fun few minutes of rummaging through stuff I hadn't touched in months. Finally, I found the damn thing under the kitchen sink. Logical place to keep it, right? Anyway, I pulled off my boots, unbuckled my belt, dropped my jeans on the floor, and stretched the leg out on the couch to give it a wipe and a wrap, which was pretty much all I was equipped to do…

…and there was nothing there. No, my leg was there, of course, but the holes in my leg had disappeared completely. Gone. Without a trace. The holes in my jeans were absent, too, and the blood had disappeared. All that was left was a faint ache. It was as if I'd never been bitten at all.

Now, I _knew_ that something was up.

_Think, Henry. When did the pain start going away? Was it during the trip back to the Hole? No…it still hurt like hell then. And I was bleeding like a stuck pig. I was lucky that damn dog didn't hit an artery, actually. But when I woke up here…it hurt less, and it was bleeding less. Actually, it might have stopped bleeding when I was rooting through the shelves in the bathrooms…and now that I think about it, I don't remember it hurting at all after I got up from under the kitchen sink. _

I remembered a small scrape on my hand that I'd gotten crawling into the Hole to come back, on one of the sharp rocks, and turned up my palm to have a look. It was unblemished, too.

_I'm healing. Quickly. Very quickly. But only after I get back here._

_What. The. Hell. This makes no sense._

Still, gift horse, mouth, you know. I dropped the first-aid kit into my chest and put my pants and boots back on. I almost stashed the spare box of bullets, too, but who knew if I was going to need them. They stayed in my pocket.


	5. South Ashfield Station 3

The turnstiles were just the same. Guess those haven't changed much over the years. The old brass coin dropped in with the familiar sound, and I was through. Now what? Down the stairs, I guess. I didn't hear anything coming my way, so down I went.

You don't hear them initially, you know. Not when they first start to come through the walls. There's just this oily black splotch, shimmering and writhing on the wall. Then, there's a hollow sort of roar, and the hands and head come out first. That takes several seconds, as it pulls itself through the wall. Then, the rest of the body floats forward, trailing thick sticky black goo like glue. That takes the longest. Once the whole body is out, it falls to the floor and starts crawling away…and there it is, ladies and gentlemen. One ghost, ripe off the tree.

I found all of that out later, of course. At _that_ moment, I was just running down the steps to the Lynch Street platform. I turned right and found myself face to face with the first ghost I'd ever seen in person. You know what they look like? Interestingly enough, not like dead people. I found _that_ out later, too. They look like…well, like dead people in that they're all bloody and gray and mangled, but there's no putrefaction or skin slippage or any of that stuff that you see on TV. They look drained and dry, like mummies but without the shrinking and wrinkling. Some of them have eyes, some don't; some are shredded like old fish, some aren't; some float, some crawl, and some walk. Some have weapons, some don't.

What all of them had in common was that they could hurt you without even touching you. First, you'd know that they were there from the aura of cold that would sweep over you and seep into your bones. Then, you'd get this godawful headache…you'd see red and you couldn't think straight from the pain. I nearly keeled over a couple of times from that alone. But if they want to get up close and personal, they just put their hands through your chest, like in that movie. I'm not going to talk about that. This one, though, just growled and swiped at me. I stood stunned for a second, then ran as fast as I could down the steps to the platform before it could grab me.

I'd forgotten about Cynthia for the moment, but there she was, inside the train on the platform. Stuck inside. How she'd managed that, I have no idea. She was banging on the door, screaming at me to let her out. Tears of frustration streaked her cheeks. I tried to pry the doors apart, but with no luck.

"Stay there," I yelled. _Not like she's going anywhere. _"Let me see if I can find a switch or something."

She nodded, and I ran down the platform toward the first car. There had to be a door switch there somewhere, right? On my way, my friend from a few minutes before appeared, but fortunately, I was able to duck into the car before he reached me.

The floor of the subway car was damp, for some reason. A big red button presented itself. "Door Release", it read.

_This is way too easy…_

I pressed the button, and with a _whoosh_ the doors on the train opened. Or, at least, I thought they had…when I stepped back onto the platform, only a few of the doors seemed to be open, and the local population of undead floaters seemed to have increased to three. I ran as fast as I could toward Cynthia, who was clip-clopping her way along the platform as quickly as she could (which wasn't very quickly).

"Come on!" I said, and grabbed her hand. "It's not safe here."

"No shit," she said. She pulled her hand loose and glared at me. "What are you going to do about it?"

_Sheesh._ Attitude from her wasn't what I needed at that moment, gorgeous amber eyes notwithstanding. "I'm going this way," I said, as coldly as I could manage, gesturing at the door at the end of the platform. "You're free to join me. Or not. Your pick."

She seemed to realize what she'd said, and smiled shyly, which was somehow more surprising at that moment than if she'd snapped at me again. "I'm sorry," she said, "I just…I'm scared. Henry, I…"

"Cynthia," I said, "it's OK. Don't worry about it. But we really have to get going, you know?"

"Sure," she said, and I took her hand and ran toward the door. The ghosts were on our tail, and I gripped the doorknob and pulled…

…against a locked door. No way out here.

_God DAMN it!_

Three ghosts were bearing down on us, the one I'd seen before plus an older woman and a gray-haired man in a sweater. I ignored Cynthia's bafflement. Out of options…I could try up the stairs, but I knew that the Hole wasn't going to be much help here. Sooner or later, we'd have to figure out how to get out of this place. Maybe if we could get into the trains…

The open train door next to us led nowhere, so I ran to the other end, Cynthia doing her best to keep up with me. There was an open door, and just across from it was another open door. Doors on _both sides_ of the car must be open...

…_and if so…then can I get over to the car on the other side from here? Maybe. Hell, it's worth a try._

Cynthia nearly collided with my back at that moment.

"What is it, Henry?"

"We may be able to get through to the other side. Follow me."

So, we made our way through the cars. Some were blocked off with hanging metal and…other things that smelled horrible and didn't bear further inspection. In one car, we found a colorful box sitting on a seat, abandoned. It was locked, so we left it behind. Finally, after a lot of bobbing and weaving and a close scrape with the old lady, we were on the opposite platform. The steps were blocked, but there was another box of bullets sitting on them (yeah, it was weird, but there's that gift horse again).

As the ghosts swirled around us, I spotted a door at the other end, just as there had been on the other side. "That door," I said to her, pointing. "Let's go." She nodded, and we took off. I heard her behind me as I flung the door open. I _know_ I did. I wouldn't have gone through if I'd thought…I'd never have…

The room beyond was bathed in red light. A ladder led down, probably to a maintenance passage or something, and there was a big Hole on the right-hand wall. But Cynthia…

_God, if I'd known…was there anything I could have done about it?_

Cynthia wasn't there. Nowhere in sight. I cracked the door open again and stuck my head out, but all I saw were ghosts. She was gone.

Gone. I'd lost her. Again.

_She's relying on you, Henry. Relying on you to get her out of here. And you've managed to lose her…**twice**. Just how useless **are** you, anyway?_

Pretty damn useless, it seemed. But…no, I couldn't think about that. Not yet. I had to concentrate on finding her. I had to know how this place worked. I had to do everything I could to get her and me out of here safely…even though I didn't have the foggiest idea _how_ that was going to be possible.

The Hole gaped wide and dark. I didn't know if it was going to take me back as the other one had, but somehow I knew that I was going to have to find out sooner or later just how these things worked.

* * *

It did. Just as the other one had. Perhaps they all would. If I found more, that is. Whatever. I couldn't be bothered to think about it much. A quick check to see that nothing new had happened (it hadn't), and I was whooshing back through the Hole in the bathroom...somehow what seemed so strange half an hour ago was perfectly normal now.

* * *

Still no Cynthia. Down the ladder it was, then. I found myself in a maintenance passage, as I'd expected. What wasn't expected were the red, throbbing walls that thrummed and squirmed like living flesh. I felt as if I were in the bowels of some enormous beast. A passage led off to the right several feet along, and another ladder rose up from the other end. A second's thinking told me where that ladder went to, and sure enough at the top of that ladder was another small red room, without a Hole but with a locked door. I was pretty sure that that door led onto the other platform, where I'd found Cynthia stuck in the train. Why one door would be unlocked and another locked I had no idea, but it didn't seem worth worrying about. I unlocked the door, pocketed the box of bullets on the floor, and headed back down. After all, you never know when you're going to have to backtrack...

Do you?

Anyway, onward. "Onward" was probably down the middle corridor, so along I went. The old, gray-haired ghost with the hole in the back of his head took a few swipes, but only winged me once, and I managed to get around the old lady with no trouble at all. The passage took a right turn and led to some steps, still red and oozing like the passage, which ended in a door. The walls writhed and burbled at me as if they were alive.

Now I knew where I was. The door led onto the King Street Line platforms, both of them. However, there were a few changes. Metal cages hanging from the ceiling with rotting bodies in them...blood on the floors and walls...and a dog by the door that fell after a few blows from the pipe and a stomp. The worm was here, too, hanging from the ceiling, throbbing and growling. There was only one train here, though. The left-hand track sat empty, while the car on the right stood open. So far, looking around and poking into corners had paid off well, so I headed for the car.

Just then, a crackling noise erupted from above, and then the whine of microphone feedback.

"Henry..."

Cynthia's voice floated over the P.A. system. I stopped and looked around, like people always do. As if you ever actually _see_ anything over a P.A. system, right?

"...I found the exit."

_Shit. Really? Where?_

"Come to the turnstile." She sounded oddly calm...The turnstile? The _turnstile_? Hadn't I been over that area with a fine-toothed comb? There was _no_ exit up there...at least, there hadn't been...maybe there was now.

"Henry...I found the exit...come to the turnstile!" Faster, now, and more excited. "Hurry! Hurry!" She didn't have to tell me once. I started running...but what I heard next stopped me in my tracks.

"It's him!"

..._Who? **Who?**_

"He's coming!"

Another screech…and the P.A. fell silent.

"**WHO?**" I yelled at it. "**WHO?**" There was no answer...but for the familiar scratching that indicated an incipient four-legged pest problem. They started filing out of the train, wandering around and sniffing for prey. Like me. That merited a pipe across the back, which netted me four dead doggies, three bites on the leg, and one golf club. Yeah, a golf club. Somebody had left a random 9-iron sitting on a seat inside the train...and what the hell, it was probably good for a few whacks on _something_ before it gave way.

Far ahead, I could see a light in the side of the tunnel. An access corridor, perhaps? I couldn't go far enough forward in the train to get to it...but maybe the train itself could be moved. I headed toward the driver's compartment. Nothing much was in the front of the train. Just the driver's seat, and the controls. There was some kind of bolt or shaft sticking out of the console, like the shaft of a knob...but without the knob. Whatever. I didn't have any way of moving the train, so out I went. There were escalators up to the turnstiles on the other side, I knew. I'd used them a hundred times. There was a Hole in the other wall, too. Given that I was still limping and bleeding, perhaps a trip home was in order before I went further.

_What about Cynthia? Is she in trouble?_

Well, I wasn't going to be able to fight effectively on one leg, so I headed toward the Hole. As I passed by the escalators, something caught my eye, low on the ground...a bottle. I picked it up. "Nutrition Drink", it read. It was full of some sort of semi-opaque brown liquid, like thick tea or something. Didn't look appetizing...probably one of those juice-of-random-vegetables health drinks that go for several dollars a bottle and taste like sludge. I pocketed it anyway (my pockets were getting full...) and headed back through the Hole.

* * *

It only took a few minutes to heal up. This time, I sat up on my bed, dropped my jeans to my ankles and watched it happen. It's a weird sensation, feeling your flesh rejoin and seal and seeing the blood that soaks your clothes disappear like magic. It's like tiny little worms in your flesh. Very unsettling. But the results were well worth it, every time. I reassembled myself, dumped off the drink and a box of bullets, and headed back.

* * *

Everything was the same when I got back. The dogs were still bleeding out outside of the single train car. I had no idea how much time had passed since I'd left. I've wondered ever since whether it would have made a difference, you know. Whether if I'd gone straight up to the turnstiles instead of detouring back home...if I'd have been able to intervene. Somehow, I don't think it would...but that may just be my guilt trying to cover for me. I'll probably never know what might have happened. No, I _know_ I'll never know. Anyway, I stepped onto the escalators under the "Exit" sign and hoped that the sign was accurate.

The escalators were a lot longer than I remembered. I couldn't see the top. It was as if I was being carried back up into that blackness from which I'd descended before. Maybe that would be a good thing. At least, there were two of them this time, one up and one down. I started running up the steps, past the throbbing, bloody walls, two steps at a time...and promptly got smacked backward by _something_. Hard. My feet left the ground, and I spun around and flew several feet back down and hit _hard_, my head bouncing off of the solid steel under the rubber handrail. That hurt like hell, believe me. Not something I wanted to repeat.

As I hauled myself back up, I glanced up at the wall. There was a torso with a head sticking out, faceless and bloody as the rest of the place, long arms waiting for me to come back up for another bitch-slapping. As I backed down the escalator, it swung a red-palmed hand in my direction, beckoning me back up.

_Not without my trusty pipe, you asshole. _

And he wasn't the last. I didn't worry about killing them...I couldn't knock them down, of course, so I just swung to stun so that I could run out of swipe range. Still, a couple of times there were two right next to each other, and I got smacked around some more before I finally staggered off of the top of the escalator, rather the worse for wear but still alive. I was bruised and sore all over, and a cut had opened on my hand. I knew that the smell of blood hanging in the air was my own. It would take a while on my couch for all of this to heal up.

It was then that it occurred to me that _not_ staying alive was a real possibility down here. I mean, it really _hit_ me then...I'd have to be a lot more careful than I had been up till now. Again, I was really green back then, but hell, what did I know? Anyway, if it was a dream, then I didn't have anything to worry about…right?

To my left was the other end of that blocked corridor I'd seen on the way down, where I'd seen my first ghost. I grabbed the box of bullets at the end, dodged the old man climbing out of the wall, and went up the stairs that promised "EXIT: South Ashfield". These stairs led back to the turnstiles, on the other side at the King Street train entrance. As I came up the stairs, I saw a number of colorful objects on the ground. They were women's makeup items...lipstick, nail polish, a compact...over a dozen of them scattered across the ground. A few were broken and leaking onto the gray concrete, making little colorful wet spots that dulled as they soaked in. A small handbag lay next to them, open and forgotten.

_Cynthia's? I don't remember her carrying a handbag...but whose else could it be?_

I bent to look more closely, but froze when my eye caught the window to the ticket booth. There were little pieces of paper hanging up inside, as usual, notices about this or that, whatever little bits of information that needed to be posted...and there were spots of red on their edges. More red covered the rest of the window. It was dripping downward, and I'd spread far too much of that kind of red around over the past hour or whatever to _not_ know immediately what it was. _Whose_ was the question.

Then it came to me, slowly. This was the ticket office was where station-wide announcements were made from...over the P.A...like the one that Cynthia had made _a few minutes ago_. Suddenly, getting the door to that booth open was the most important thing in the world. The doorknob wouldn't budge. But there was a small rectangular plate fastened to the outside of the door, like a dry-erase board on a dorm room door. It was a deep red, and bore a strange picture, of a half-naked woman dancing, with veils in her hands. It came off in my hands, and as I stared at it, I heard the lock click. I turned the doorknob, and the door opened.

Inside...

...I can't do this.

But I have to. Suck it up, Townshend. What would Dad say? Heh. Plenty of things.

Inside...was covered in bright red blood. Walls, ceiling, floor, all were soaked in thick sprays of blood that was still glistening and dripping onto the counters and boxes and everything. The room was in disarray, as well. Chairs and papers lay on the floor. It was a real mess. Some sort of struggle had taken place in here, for certain. As if there could be any doubt with Cynthia lying there in the middle of the storm, drenched in red.

I don't know how long I stood there like an idiot, trying to wrap my brain around what was so clear in front of me. Then, I was by her side, lifting her up as gently as I could. She turned her head to me, and her mouth opened. To the end of my days, I'll never forgive myself for what came out of my mouth next.

"Are you OK?"

God help me, she had the grace to overlook one of the stupidest questions in modern history. Then, I looked at her face and realized why. She was terrified. She knew that she was dying...and suddenly, so did I.

"It's...just a dream...right?"

Too tired to think of something halfway intelligent to say to a dying woman. Too useless to stop it from happening in the first place. But never, _never_ too weak to feel my own heart break. Over someone I'd just met, someone I barely knew, you'll say. Just some girl in a subway station. Yeah, right. How can a cold fish like you feel that way about a woman like her, anyway? What was she to you? What could she have ever been? Never mind what you never could have been to her…

I just hope, for your own sake, that you never have to find out how that can feel. Trust me on this one. Please.

"I think...I drank too much...last night."

She laughed softly, gasping, but she couldn't hide the terror in her voice. A few tiny drops of bright red blood spurted up from her wounds and fastened themselves to my shirt, as if trying to escape her fate. It seemed so unreal, all of it. I'm ashamed to admit it, but all I could think of that moment was that I wanted this to be the worst drunken dream I'd ever had, that I'd have given anything to be able to puke and eat a banana and have all of this go away...the blood and the dogs and the damn escalators...everything. No, that wasn't right. Everything but her. No. Not Cynthia. _Never_ Cynthia. It hit me then. When had she come to mean so much to me? What was happening to me?

There was no question what was happening to her. It was starting to sink in, and I had no idea what to do. I took her hand in mine. It was ice cold and slippery with blood. She managed a tiny little smile.

"I never got...to do that... 'special favor'...for you."

Her other hand reached up and stroked my cheek weakly. I tried to smile back at her, but failed miserably, and I could only squeeze her hand and gape at her like a stunned fish. I'd forgotten all about that "favor"...it was the last thing on my mind. That was years ago, after all. I wanted to tell her that. _It was never about the favor, you know. You didn't have to do that. I'd never have...it wasn't like that._

Then, it got worse. Her eyes opened wide in terror. "I..."

_You..._

"I feel like...I'm _dying_," she groaned. Her voice broke over the last word, and her amber eyes looked straight into mine. There was panic in them...and something else, too...a faraway look, a...a _cloudiness_. What could I say to...to ease her mind?

I found my voice at last. "It's okay," I said as convincingly as I could. "It's just a dream." Is that the worst lie I've ever told? Or the best? I don't know...it didn't matter just then. I just wanted her to be _happy_...and if I had to lie to her to make that happen, then it was such a small thing to do.

She smiled up at me, and I knew that she saw right through it. But she didn't care, and neither did I. There was gratitude in her eyes. I saw it clearly. I know I did. And then her hand slipped out of mine, and those glorious amber eyes hazed over, and her head fell back, and she was dead.

_Dead..._

dead

I have a vague memory of lowering her to the floor and closing her eyes. I don't remember much about what happened next, actually...just a tunnel of darkness that ended in bloody lines on that golden flesh that I'd tried my best to avoid staring at when we'd met.

_**16121**_

Carved into her chest, for the world to see.

As I said, I don't remember...I wish I did. Somebody should have. _I_ should have.

* * *

There was a siren outside of my window when I woke up again. It took me a while to gain enough consciousness to figure out that it was an ambulance siren, and then a while longer before I remembered why.

I looked out of my bedroom window. There was the ambulance, and two policemen, cordoning off the entrance to the subway. Probably had done the same to the other two entrances, the ones I couldn't see from my window. So...it had really happened. She was really dead. All of it had actually _happened_. It hadn't been a dream. This was real, as real as the tear that was sneaking down my face as if it thought it could get by unnoticed.

The radio was blaring when I staggered out to the front room. The voices...they seemed to be those of the policemen working with Cynthia's...Cynthia. I heard every word as clear as day. How those voices got onto my radio was unknown and unimportant...

No, that's wrong. They were proof. Proof that there was _someone_ behind all of this.

I pulled the little plaque from my pocket. The woman on the front looked like something out of a Mesoamerican carving. She danced her eternal dance of the veils, proudly bare-breasted and smiling. On the back was a single word:

_Temptation_

What did it mean? Was that all that Cynthia had been to me? No. She was...she was much more. Something I couldn't put into words. But now she was in the past, _was _the past, a tiny little nugget of the past that would stay in my mind forever like a primordial insect trapped in amber, preserved and perfect. She was dead, and I was alive and completely at sea.

I dropped onto my couch and sat there staring at the plaque for a long time. Its surface was smooth and cool, like her hands had been, before her blood had chilled them and made them wet and slippery. I laid it in the chest on top of the boxes of bullets, safe from harm. Forever.


	6. In the forest 1

I've realized something while I've been thinking about things. Just so you know. From now on, I'm not going to bother with all of the details of what I found where. Bullets, sludge, all of that stuff. Hell, I don't remember half of it, probably more, so I couldn't tell you anyway. They're boring, and ultimately irrelevant to anything apart from my own survival. Let's just say that I was very careful with what I found, and there was enough. The important stuff will stay, though.

* * *

I spent some time sitting on my couch, resting, letting my assorted scratches and bruises heal up and taking a breather…and _not_ thinking about what had just happened. I couldn't think about…those things, not just now. That would have to wait for later when this was all over and I…well, when whatever was going to happen, happened. I didn't know if this was all _ever_ going to end…but I held onto that hope. If it wasn't going to, then what would be the point of going back through the Hole? 

No, there were some things that I definitely couldn't afford to think about just yet. Those I filed away in the back of my head for whenever. The future was indefinite, and I had to worry about now. So I thought about hellhounds and ghosts and bullets and what I might find in the subway when I went back...and, although I tried not to, eventually I couldn't help myself. I thought about Cynthia as well. I wanted to remind myself...hell, _torture_ myself with the memories so that I'd never forget what my slowness and stupidity had cost her. By God, it wasn't going to happen again. If I ran into anybody else, that was. I really hoped I wouldn't. I fixed that thought in my mind, and concentrated on steeling myself for whatever was coming next.

When I was feeling better (physically, at any rate), I lifted myself up and tested the leg. It seemed to be working just fine, apart from the slight soreness that was becoming a constant companion. Well, that would have to be good enough. As I leaned on it, my eye caught the hole in the wall again. The pinpoint of light in its center was still flickering…and I couldn't stop staring at it.

_You…pervert. Peeping tom. Creep. You know better. _

Yeah, I did. But after Cynthia, I felt this burning _need_ to see somebody, anybody. I hadn't realized before how much I needed that. Even if I couldn't talk to her…I could know that Eileen was there. Hell, at this rate, she might be the last person I ever saw up close.

_Only if you promise never to tell anybody…and to look away if you see something you shouldn't._

_OK. _

As it turned out, nothing much was going on in Eileen's world. She was lying on her stomach on her bed, reading a book, waving her feet in the air above her. I couldn't see what kind of book it was…some small paperback novel, I guess. Still, I felt a smile cross my face. She was _there_, and having a normal day, and that was all I needed.

The warm fuzzies melted away at the sight of another piece of red paper under my door.

_Although the cult itself is gone, I'm sure the spirit of it is still alive.  
There are too many strange things happening in that town.  
I'm investigating two people. Or maybe I should say just one.  
I've just about discovered what's going on._

_April 8_

I still didn't have any idea who was leaving me these notes, or how. Whatever.

_File it away and keep going…it may make some sense later, right? Heh. Hope springs eternal. _

_Still…a cult? Strange things going on? Might have something to do with all of this…why do I feel like I should know what this guy's talking about? _

_Well, I don't, so I'm not going to worry about it now._

Nobody was in the hallway, but there was another handprint on the wall. Redder and fresher than the others. Was it in blood, too? It hadn't been there before…

The Hole in the bathroom had changed. It was bigger, a little bigger, and more ragged. What did this mean? There was only one way to find out. At least it was a little easier to get into this time.

* * *

…waking up again. Sitting on something hard, like before. But something was different. It was the smell. It didn't smell like dirt and grease and metal any more. It smelled like…green. Like cold, fresh air. 

_Like outdoors._

Strange, how bleary-eyed I got after going through that Hole. But as things came into focus, I realized that wherever I was, it wasn't the subway station. I was sitting on hard, bare ground, cracked and old. I was on a cleared path in the forest. There were trees all around me, and grass and rocks, and a few rickety wooden fences. A cool breeze blew through my shirt and rustled the trees slightly, bringing the fresh smell of water to my nose along with the scent of the trees. The sky stretched dark gray over me, and I couldn't tell if it was day or night.

_Which forest?_

Damned if I knew. There didn't seem to be anything unusual about this forest. I'm no botanist or biologist or environmentalist, so it's not as if I would have noticed much. A tree is a tree to me, and a forest is a forest. If anything, it looked kind of like the forest I'd gone to for that assignment, the last time I'd used my first-aid kit. The forest between Silent Hill and Ashfield. So, I might have been near my apartment, for all I knew. Not that it really seemed to matter…but the thought did make me feel a little better.

_Weird, though, that I always end up sitting up…you'd think I'd be lying down if I was just dropped into here. Not that I'm complaining. No need for a faceful of dirt._

The path ended abruptly a few feet behind me. On either side there were fences overlooking a river or lake or something. It was hard to see what was down there in the haze. In front of me lay thirty or so more feet of path, illuminated by a single lonely lamppost. A wood-and-wire fence and gate were the obvious next step.

_So, if there's a lamppost...there must be a source of electricity around here somewhere. I'm not completely out in the middle of nowhere._

To either side of the path by the gate were large stones and a stump, with strange inscriptions on them. The letters were bright red, as if written in crayon or chalk. The shape of the writing was something I'd seen before, but it was nothing I could read. It reminded me of Greek or Cyrillic or something like that, but I'd never been a languages person either, so I couldn't make any sense of it. There was an old stone well here, too. It was dark and deep, and it looked as though it hadn't been used in years. There didn't seem to be much going on here, so I pulled open the gate and passed through.

Beyond the fence there was more forest, more path, and more cliffs. The body of water below was large, that much was clear. It looked like a lake...maybe it was Toluca Lake? I couldn't be sure. But what caught my attention was the concrete wall that blocked the other end of the path, with two heavy doors in the middle and a Hole right beside them. At least I'd have Holes here, it seemed. By the doors was a sign.

_Danger. Do Not Enter._

_Whatever_. Thanks for the warning, but this was an emergency. Not like anybody was around to keep me out, anyway. Perhaps this was the source of the power to the lampposts...if I was lucky, it would be a source of answers, too.

No easy answers lay beyond the doors, though, only more questions. I was learning not to be disappointed at that. Instead, there was a long path through a large concrete room with an upper and a lower level. On either side on the upper level were fenced-off areas with large steel drums that oozed onto the ground and stank to high heaven of _something_ that I couldn't identify and I wasn't sure I wanted to anyway. The drums were piled around the lower level as well. The whole place looked like a factory...but there were no machines or equipment or anything, just pipes and sealed steel drums.

As I walked further into the space, I became aware of a faint buzzing sound that came and went. Whenever it was nearby, I'd stop and look around, but I couldn't see anything. I made my way several feet into the room and started heading down the metal ramp…then, the sound was very close, just behind me, and before I could turn around there was a sharp shooting pain through my head, like a railroad spike. Something big and dark was flapping around me. I could see its wings and a long, pointed beak or stinger or whatever the _hell_ it was that had just hit me. So I hit back. There was a swarm of them. They were like huge, dark birds...or bats, but with long bills or noses like an anteater or hummingbird. They went straight for the head, and could give you the mother of all blinding headaches in an instant. I found out later that the headaches weren't the worst part...what was much worse was that, in the few seconds after one hit you, you couldn't move or see or do _anything_ but stand there, a sitting duck for whatever wanted to take a shot at you next. By themselves, they weren't too bad, though. A whack and a stomp was all it took.

The next area held more of the same. More concrete, more pipes, more barrels, and more bat-birds. The stench was...I want to say indescribable, but that's a cop-out. It was the stink of rot, flesh and blood rotting, but with a twist of chemical smell thrown in. Whatever was in the barrels wasn't completely organic, and probably wasn't useful for food or fertilizer or anything, but it wasn't chemical enough to keep from decomposing. I didn't have a single idea what something that smelled like that could be used for, actually, but figuring that out wasn't high on my list of priorities as I headed down through the next gate.

The next space was outdoors again, smaller and shorter. Somehow, somebody had gotten an old beat-up car into here, and the thing was still running with its lights on, sitting there spitting out clouds of gray exhaust. It had been years since I'd seen a heavy two-door land yacht like that. The driver's side door was open, as if whoever had managed to drive it into here had just left it idling for a minute. The license plate was in-state. On the cracked vinyl of the driver's seat were a couple of notes that didn't make any sense to me at the time (something about a nosy guy), but I pocketed them anyway and headed through the gate...

...and there was the driver. He was a tall, skinny guy in jeans and a green T-shirt, with a buzz cut and a twitch, sitting on a stump and looking around. There were lit candles on the single fence that zig-zagged through the middle of the area, flanked by two huge stones that dominated the area. They must have been thirty feet tall. Their gray surfaces glowed eerily in the flickering light. There were weird things carved into them, too, circular or spiral symbols, that I'd never seen before.

I walked up to him. I wanted to ask him if that was his car...I guess, because that was the only question that came to mind that didn't involve weird alternate realities and people dying and monsters and other stuff that would probably have earned me nothing more than a weird look at best. But I could ask him about the car, at least. Anyway, it would be rude to just walk by like he wasn't there, and if I ticked him off I might end up regretting it.

As I was opening my mouth, I realized that it could be an awkward moment. I've never been comfortable just striking up conversations out of the blue, and this was more weird than usual. If I didn't say anything, it would seem like I was ignoring him or trying to sneak up on him, but if I did I'd probably end up sounding like I was either trying to pick him up or steal the car. So, I was in a bind. Fortunately, he started talking before I did.

"S-so...you c-came to investigate this s-stone too..."

He started rambling on about stones and a cult and some ancient Native American spirits and dead ancestors and other things. I have to admit that after about thirty seconds of this, I stopped listening and just wrote him off as a weirdo. Normally I don't like to be so judgmental, but I was much more focused at the moment on finding a way out of this place than I was on obscure Native American legends. So, I ignored him and continued on.

Was that a mistake? I still have absolutely no idea. In case you haven't guessed yet, that's going to be a recurring theme here.

I promptly forgot about it, though, as the next area presented me with three hellhounds and a weird, bloody, fabric-covered _thing_ hanging directly over the path, on a wooden framework. It looked as if it weighed a few hundred pounds, and was going to drop on top of me the moment I ran beneath it. I stayed where I was and surveyed the area. One of the dogs was on the near side of the thing, and the other two were at the other end of the path.

After a moment's thought, I crept forward and took out the near dog, then backed away and waited. Sure enough, the other two headed for their former friend and started feasting on him. Just like before, in the subway...and just like before, they were too distracted to do much to me. I was actually able to walk right past them without any trouble. Go figure. And no, the thing didn't fall on me…I was able to get around it with no problem at all. I suppose its presence was kind of pointless. But I wasn't complaining.

The last space held more dogs, a couple more bird-bats, and a large, official-looking wooden fence at the end. A combination of pipework and planned distractions got me across to the fence. There was a single sign standing by the gate.

_Silent Hill Smile Support Society_  
"_Wish House"_

Now, I knew exactly where I was. Kind of. I was in the forest outside of Silent Hill, standing just outside of a building that had, up until this minute, been only a rumor to me. I'd heard stories about the cult in Silent Hill, when I was there on vacation a couple of times and from a couple of other people at work a while back. I'd guess that most people in Ashfield and Brahms have heard the rumors too, and even at PRU people talked about it. The cult members worshipped some strange god, in secret, and did other stuff that seemed just too incredible to believe. They also kept kids in an orphanage in the middle of the forest, isolated and open to whatever brainwashing cult crap got sent their way. I guess the idea was that by the time they were old enough to be able to leave, they would be too far into the cult to want to. God only knows what kind of life those kids led…nobody really seemed to know enough about the place to say. It's probably all come out now after the fact, but back then nobody knew anything for sure. At least, I sure as hell didn't. It was all just rumors.

Anyway, the name of the place was said to be "Wish House". When I first heard that, I'd thought, _Yeah, as in "I wish I could get out of this damn cult,__"__ right? _And here it was, right in front of me, as real as I was. So, they weren't just rumors then. This place really existed, and the cult did, too. What would I find inside? Or who? Was it full of little brainwashed cult-kiddies? Mindless, scripture-spewing, robotlike children?

I didn't have a lot of time to waste pondering all of this, though, as the dogs behind me had finished their meal and were coming my way. So I pulled on the handle and squeezed through the heavy wooden doors.

I know that sounded really callous. Perhaps it was. I probably didn't think of them in that way at the time. But I don't remember exactly what I was thinking...just the gist of it. It's like I said before, remember? Memory is necessarily seen through the eyes of the person remembering, not the person making the memory, and in this case those are two very different people. Still, I'll do my best to keep that out of things.

In front of me was a large cleared-out area, surrounded on all four sides by a wooden fence that had to be at least ten feet tall. There were pictures of flowers and animals on the fence, pictures that looked as though they might have been drawn by little kids...if little kids grew ten feet tall. In the middle of it all was an imposing two-story building with a porch along the front. It wasn't very big, but it loomed ominously over the entire area.

_That must be where they keep the kids. _

There didn't seem to be any kids around, or anybody (or anything) else. I was by myself in there, as far as I could tell, so I spent several seconds just looking around. It hit me then, how gray everything was. Really. Everything I'd seen since I woke up on the path was the same uniform shade of gray. Neither light nor dark, just...gray. Even the trees and the ground...they should have been a deep, vibrant green or brown, but no, they were gray, too. The subway had been gray, of course, but that was expected. It shouldn't have been here. If not for the little pen of colorful balls sitting in front of the building and the illegible red writing by the door, the whole scene would have looked like an old black-and-white photograph. Would have been better in sepia tones, though.

There were three other doors in the fence, one in each corner. There was also a Hole in one of the side walls. I didn't need to use it just yet, so I headed for the building and pulled at the front door. It was locked. So, that option was going to have to wait. My next move would be to go through one of the other doors.

It occurred to me that drawing a map might be a good idea. I hadn't thought that I needed one in the subway, since I knew the station's layout pretty well (or at least, I thought I had). Here, though…I'd never been _here_ before. With all of the doors that looked the same and all of the wildlife that was out for my blood, it might be useful to have a record of where I'd been, so if I got mauled by something out there and lost track of things I wouldn't end up backtracking needlessly. For that, I needed paper and something to write with. So, back through the Hole I went.

* * *

The sound of my doorbell cut through my headache as I sat up on my bed. Couldn't get excited about it, though. 

_Five days in here and somebody's finally ringing the doorbell…as if I could answer the door. Well, I guess that it's the thought that counts. _

_Yeah, right._

It was Eileen. As I watched, she put her nose up to the peephole, and peered straight through. Her distorted face nearly filled the whole peephole. I started hammering on the door with everything I had, yelling at the top of my lungs. Of course, she didn't react at all, just squinted into the hole and muttered to herself.

"There's something going on in this room."

Now, _that_ I could get excited about. _Yes! YES! There is DEFINITELY something going on! Now, get me the hell outta here!_

Then along came our resident crab, Richard, and my mood went south immediately. There's always one, no matter where you live, and he was ours. Always snooping around, looking for trouble, yelling at the kids next door to shut up. He made it his business to know everybody else's business, and I usually just steered clear of him in case he decided to latch onto whatever he thought I was doing wrong. But Eileen had no such qualms, it seemed. Fortunately, he was in a cooperative mood today...probably curious, right?

Anyway, he said that he couldn't see anything wrong from his window (and you _know_ that he looked into everybody's windows), so they went to get the super. I didn't think it would be so disappointing after five days, to see people actually _noticing,_ but it hit me again just how…_bad_ this all was. It was damn depressing, actually...surprisingly so. My momentary joy was gone as quickly as it had come. I slid to the floor and sat there for a while before I remembered why I'd come back.

As it happened, there was a brand-new blank notebook lying on my desk from two or three days before. That was the last time I'd tried to work through the headache, and I'd failed miserably. I had everything I needed to get started on Widmark's project…except any kind of attention span. So the notebook had stayed there, unused. I grabbed it and a couple of hard pencils and headed back.

* * *

The wooden steps of Wish House were slightly bowed and worn smooth, from many years of use. I sat down on the top step, leaned back against one of the wooden pillars that flanked the stairs, and opened the notebook to the first set of pages. 

Drawing the map of the subway took only a few minutes (at last, that drafting class I'd taken in college paid off), and I was able to remember most of what I'd seen. Walls, escalators, piles of debris in the middle of corridors...everything made its way onto the map. As I drew the box for the King Street ticket office, my pencil stopped over its center. After a few seconds, I wrote "Cynthia" in the middle of the box. I knew that she probably wasn't there any more, of course. The ambulance would have taken her to the hospital (or the morgue), but it didn't seem complete without her name. On the next page I put the Wish House in the middle, and drew the path I'd taken off to one corner.

_OK. I know where I've been…now, where am I going? Gotta start somewhere. So, through the door in the other corner by the Hole. _

But before I got up, I put the notebook and my pencil into my pocket and took a minute or two of down time. This was the only place I'd been so far where there wasn't any wildlife clawing at my throat, where I could take a short break, and perhaps if I took a good look around and let it all sink in, I might see something or figure out something that would help me make sense of it all. So I sat on the steps and watched and waited for inspiration.

None came, of course.

Eventually, I stood up and stretched, and as I bent backwards and my joints popped, my eyes opened and I was staring at the sky. Have you ever been outside at night when it's clear and cold and everything is sharp and bright? If you look at the moon in just the right way, really _look_ at it, you can feel yourself falling into it and feel the skies surround you and swallow you up. I know what you're thinking right now…_Henry, what were you on and where can I get some of it?_ Seriously, though…you feel so small. It happened to me again just then. There was no clear moon (which was weird, since the place seemed almost moonlit), but that gray sky opened up and pulled me in. In the normal world, it was disquieting and comforting at the same time…here, though, it was beyond unnerving. It was as if I didn't exist any more, as if I'd dissolved and simply evaporated. I felt my hand miles away groping for the wooden post of the porch, and then I was back, in one piece, standing on the old wooden steps.

Enough screwing around. It was time to get on with it. I walked around the side of the building, past the Hole, and pulled the door open.

The area beyond was quiet, and devoid of wildlife except for a couple of bird-bats. Another stone well gaped by the path, which led to a large stone wall with a gate. Within was some kind of construction site, with tools and steel I-beams and more steel drums and other stuff scattered around as if abandoned suddenly. The place stank horribly, like the drums from earlier, but with a freshness, as if something in there _hadn't_ been dead for months.

As I slowly moved forward into the room, I could see why. Above me was a metal track, like the kind they use for track lighting, but heavier and rusted…and hanging from the track at the other end of the room was a steel platform with what looked like human legs dangling from it. Somebody had died up there. Crushed to death, maybe. Recently enough to still be in one piece, too. I couldn't tell how recently, though. I didn't really want to know. I made a mental note to keep an eye on the platform in case it started moving again, and walked further along.

_Bzzzzz…_

A swarm of the bat-bird things came toward me. It was all I could do to keep swatting at them to knock them down…by the time I could run over to one to stomp it to death, it and its friends were getting back up again. Those were a painful few minutes, believe me. By the end of it, I had bird guts all over my shoes, blood in my hair and an even bigger headache than before. The smell was just too much, and I got the hell out of there.

As soon as I stepped into the next area, I knew exactly where I was. Toluca Lake was spread out before me, huge and dark. I don't know if you've ever been to see it, but if you have then you know just how weirdly the lake is shaped. It's not very wide, but it's many miles long. Silent Hill lies at one end, and Ashfield just past the other. Driving from one end to the other takes a couple of hours or so. When I was a kid, Mom took me to visit a friend of hers who had a house in Ashfield by the lake, and I never forgot how beautiful the water looked as it stretched away as far as the eye could see. Made me want to learn to swim…that was one of the few things I wanted to do that Dad actually approved of.

Now, I knew that I was almost at the other end, the Silent Hill end. If I could have seen around the cliffs to my left, South Vale Silent Hill would have been there, sparkling in the dark. Across from me lay Old Silent Hill and the amusement park and the lighthouse. Way, way off in the distance to my right was Ashfield…home. I couldn't see it, of course, but I knew it was there. The lake's dark beauty usually drew me to it, but here it looked foreboding, like a deep black pool that would suck me in and never let go.

The area where I was standing seemed to be a little scenic overlook. There was a small painted sign that said "Toluca Lake" by the fence, and a few random monuments or gravestones were scattered across the ground. (Strange place for a grave, though.) Some of these had that weird red writing on them. A three-legged wooden torch or lamp stood by the way I'd come, but it was unlit. I could remember having seen others like it on the first path I'd traveled. But none of that interested me as much as the Hole at the other end. As I hurried toward it, I saw something bright on the ground, and stooped to pick it up. It was a flat white box with a red cross on top…a first-aid kit, just like the one at home in my chest.

_Lucky find. Guess these little kids get their bumps and bruises just like kids everywhere._

Well, they weren't here and I was, so I took it back with me and dropped it into my chest. A few minutes of couch time and I was ready to roll again. I headed back the way I'd come.


	7. In the forest 2

Back at Wish House, I sat down on the steps again, updated my map and considered where to go next.

_Two doors down and two to go, and no sign of a way out of here_.

Might as well keep going around the fence, I figured, so I headed through the door in the opposite corner from the one I'd originally entered, to the left of Wish House. Another path, another set of gates…and a large splotch of red blood on the ground. Fresh, or it wouldn't still have been red, right? Right?

Past the gates was a longer stretch of path that led to a stone wall with heavy wooden doors. There was a well there, too, a little ways in front of the wall, and another Hole in the wall next to the doors. That was all that I had time to take in, though, since I had company of the two-legged undead variety. This one was a middle-aged guy, balding, in old denim overalls held up by one strap. There were some cuts on his chest that I couldn't see clearly…partly because he kept swinging at me with a small spade in his hand, which didn't leave a lot of time for much except running like hell. The doors were very heavy.

Once I got through them, I turned around and stopped dead in my tracks. It wasn't the large graveyard that stretched beyond that startled me, or the ancient tombstones and broken stone monuments, or the stench that I was gradually getting used to. None of that. No, it was the little _kid_ that was standing there in the middle of the gloom, twisting his fingers and sucking on his thumb as if waiting for his mother. He was a cute little kid, too…dark blondish-brown hair, light green-yellow eyes, and a striped sweater and saddle shoes. (Who wears saddle shoes these days, anyway?)

He didn't look scared or upset or anything…not at all. He just stood there, shifting from foot to foot in that way that little kids do when they don't want to talk to anybody. I used to do that all of the time when I was his age. Hell, he almost looked like me twenty-odd years ago, too. I was blonder back then, and my eyes were never as light-colored as his, but otherwise he was me. I felt bad for him. He was all alone in this Godforsaken place. The last thing I wanted to do was upset him.

So, what did I do but walk up to him and bend down and say, "Hey, little boy, what are you doing here?" As soon as the words left my mouth, I cringed inside. Any halfway responsible people within earshot of that would have had me arrested on the spot. Couldn't have blamed them, either. But I was never very good at talking to kids…they don't seem to like me much, and I don't feel comfortable around them. Good thing I never had to be a baby photographer, huh? This one just stood there and blinked at me, his mouth opening and closing as if he didn't know whether to say hello or run or scream. But he didn't seem afraid of me, just surprised to see me. I had no idea what to do next, either. Guess we were both at a loss.

Someone was walking around behind him. I readied myself for righteous parental anger or a vigilante beatdown or…well, I didn't know what. But it was just the guy from the path by the stones. The guy with the car. What was the name on that note, anyway…Jack…James…Jasper, that was it. Jasper. Once again, he got me out of an awkward situation. He was waving his arms around and rambling on again. It was more nonsense about the "Third Revelation". The little boy turned to him and blinked at him, open-mouthed. Now that I think about it, I probably reacted the same way. As Jasper stood there ranting, and we stood there gaping at him, I saw that his green T-shirt had an image of some sort of horned devil on it. There was writing below the picture, but I couldn't read it in the darkness.

_Yep. Definitely a cult nut. Maybe he's one of them. _

Oh, and apparently something big was going to happen.

_No kidding_, I thought. _It's already happening, man. Right around you. Don't know about you, but that's why **I'm**_ _here, anyway…I guess. Damned if I know for sure._

_Getting short-tempered, Henry?_

_Yeah. Patience is wearing thin. _

Then Jasper wandered off, laughing like a madman. The little boy pushed past me to the doors and slipped through, and I was left alone, standing there, wondering what the hell had just happened.

This graveyard, like everything else around there, was like nothing I'd seen before. The area was surrounded by stone walls, but on either side the walls became tall railings, and beyond them were what seemed to be parts of _something_ that had once been alive.

In the back wall was a door with a strange round red symbol on it, a couple of feet across. The door itself was locked, but I stayed in front of it for a little while anyway, staring at the symbol. It had an outer ring and an inner circle, with pictures and symbols in both, and after several seconds I realized that the letters and symbols written in the outer ring were identical to those that I'd been finding around the Holes. So, perhaps those red markings around the Holes were just part of this…whatever it was. While I stood there looking at it, I felt an unsettling tug inside my head, almost as if this thing should mean something to me. But how could it? I'd never seen it before, not ever, and I had no idea what it was.

The gravestones were spread haphazardly around the area, with large monuments here and there. There was red writing on a couple of them, and the inscriptions on most of the others were the usual "Here lies so-and-so" boilerplate. The stones were so old and weathered that I couldn't read most of the names. Not that I'd have recognized the names, anyway. This was probably where the cult buried their dead, so these were all probably cult members. A few of the stones were engraved with Revelations-type prophecies of doom and gloom and something about a Holy Mother that didn't make any sense at the time (that changed, later). There _was_ something on one of them about my home going to hell, though. At least that rang true.

On the other side of the graveyard was a freshly dug grave. Inside was an open coffin of plain wood, roughly nailed together from a few boards. It was completely empty, except for the numbers **_11121_** written on the bottom in red. Where had I seen something like that before? It took me until I was halfway back to Wish House to remember.

…_On Cynthia. Of course. But hers read **16121**…different, but similar. That's not likely to be a coincidence. What does it mean? _

I thought about it for the rest of the trip, but no explanation presented itself.

* * *

When I got back to Wish House, I found that I wasn't alone. Jasper had made his way back too (who knows how… I hadn't seen him), and was pacing back and forth on the porch. It occurred to me, belatedly, that he might have some idea about what was going on…the writing, the weird gravestones, and the little kid (he'd recognized the kid, I remembered). So, I figured, I might as well ask. He seemed reasonably harmless. The worst that I'd probably get was another earful about the sacred stones.

"Th-th-the door won't open," he stuttered as I walked up the steps. That wasn't news, but it gave me an idea. He seemed to know things about this place…maybe he'd say something more interesting if I waited.

_Don't ask questions just yet, Henry. Let him talk._

"Th-that n-n-nosy guy g-g-gave me something…really good…"

_Wonder what he thinks is something good._

"I…I…I…I c-could l-l-let you have it….bu-bu-but not for free."

_Figures. Damn. I haven't got any money on me…my wallet's back in my room. I can point him toward some dead hellhounds, though._

He was staring at me now. "I'm really th-thirsty…"

_So am I, man, so am I. I guess I could give you that bottle of wine in my fridge. I'll miss it, but somehow you seem to need it more than I do right now._

"Oh, chocolate…oh, chocolate…"

Finally, the light went on in my brain. _Chocolate, huh?..._

Yeah, I hated to give up my last bottle of chocolate milk. But these were desperate times, and at least he seemed to enjoy it thoroughly.

"Oh, man, that was _awesome_!"

I smiled to myself. Here was a guy who really liked his chocolate milk. Well, I could understand that.

"H-here, take this…there's s-something written on it."

He fished around in his pocket and threw something heavy and metal onto the porch. It was a small hand spade or trowel, like the one the ghost in the overalls was carrying, but with reddish writing on the blade.

_Opposite where the lake and house meet,  
inside the hand holding onto the ground._

_Oookay then_. Opposite where the lake and house meet…right…well, I didn't know anything about a hand holding onto the ground, but I could do the geometry. And there was only one door left, anyway. I pocketed the little spade and headed through the fourth door, leaving Jasper to drain the last of my chocolate milk in peace.

Four dogs. _Great_. Pipe at the ready…and the same strategy I'd used against the three dogs earlier paid off, again. Don't think that this was getting routine. No. Not at all. By "paid off", I mean that I only got bitten a few times. It was never easy. There were strange bloody poles in a cluster by some trees by the far gate, but, like almost everything else around here, their purpose was obscure.

There was an uninhabited area beyond, which was a relief. Beyond the far gate was a small fenced-in space with several large trees that partially blocked the sky. Just in front of me was one with the bark missing from one side and more of that damn red writing that I really wished I could read by now. It was telling me something, I knew, something that I couldn't understand but which was probably important.

…_maybe the cult even has its own language? No, that doesn't make sense…the writings I've found so far have all been in English. That's ridiculous. But then why…_

Roots spread out all around the tree, white and ghostly in the darkness. I nearly jumped when one shaped like a hand seemed to pop out of nowhere as I came around the other side of the tree. Its fingers curled down into the dirt as if climbing out of a grave. Another white hand was just making its way up out of the ground. I knew that this was important, but it took my tired brain a second or two to figure out why.

…_bingo!_

Dig, dig, dig. Something was inside the hand, right? The spade was just the right size for the job, so I figured that I was on the right track. After a little while, I'd cleared away the dirt under the hand-root, enough to see something small and metallic hidden inside. So, I used the handle of the spade to fish the object out. Even though I knew that the thing was just a tree root, it still bothered me enough that I didn't want to get any closer to it than I had to, in case it was going to grab me or something. We've all seen those horror movies.

It was an old key, rusty, but somehow covered in fresh blood. There was writing on it.

_The holder of this key will wander for eternity._

Well, it seemed like it had already been an eternity, so that didn't seem meaningful at the moment.

In the next area was another unlit torch, a couple of rocks with writing on them, and a Hole up on a platform. There was a 6-iron up there, too, and my friend with the trowel was hanging around, probably waiting for the Third Revelation like everybody else seemed to be. As before, though, he was in a bad mood, and seemed to want to take it out on me. No time for screwing around. I grabbed the 6-iron, ran for the door, and headed past the creepy tree through the gate.

The path beyond had gotten all foggy while I'd been digging, it seemed…fog off of the lake, probably. At least I was alone. There was nothing lunging at my kneecaps or trying to drill into my skull. Good. I ran forward through the choking fog and pulled the gate open at the other end…and found myself back on a really similar-looking path.

_Huh._

So I headed through the gate again. Same thing. Same area, same path, same fog. Once again, and the same thing happened. It was like the room was looping or something…like some weird little slice of Escher. At this rate, I'd be stuck here forever…

_Eternity. You damn idiot. The key._

That key wasn't kidding about wandering for eternity. I had to get rid of it somehow, but just temporarily, in case I needed it later. Fortunately, when I went back through the gate I'd just used, I found myself back by the tree with the writing and the hand-roots. So, I headed through the next gate and dodged my trowel-carrying friend. Hole and chest to the rescue. After that, I got back to Wish House with no problem at all (except for a bite from the one dog that I'd left alive just outside the Wish House walls). Hole, chest, key in pocket, and back through the Hole…but not before checking to see if there was anything new going on in my place (there wasn't), and then entertaining myself for several seconds by watching Eileen chase a bee back and forth in the hallway. Or maybe it was the bee doing the chasing…it wasn't really clear.

_Man, she **is** having a slow day._

* * *

Back at Wish House, I was ready to find out whether the one key I'd found in the entire area was just going to _happen_ to open the single locked door that remained.

It did. Hallelujah. The door swung open. Jasper followed me in, with a big grin on his face.

Inside Wish House, things were thrown all over the place. Tables were tipped over, and papers lay strewn on the floor. Kids' art supplies were scattered across one of the tables. Some of the furniture had been smashed. It was as if the place had been ransacked, or vacated suddenly. Jasper and I wandered the room, poking through the debris.

The single large room was almost Dickensian in its gray dilapidation. There were no toys, no games, nothing but crayons and paper and garbage and an old upright piano stuffed into a corner. Sitting in the middle of the room was a vintage cylindrical electric heater, still running to ward off the chill in the air. There was a bulletin board just inside the door, too, covered with warnings about being good and obeying the adults and not going out into the woods without permission. Just reading them sent chills through me. What did they do to these kids if they misbehaved, anyway?

…_and where **was** everybody?_

Jasper wandered by the stove in the corner, fidgeting. He caught my eye.

"I…I…I w-w-wonder what they d-did here?" he said.

I dropped the paper in my hand. "You mean, you don't know?"

"N-no," he replied. "W-wish I did, though."

"I thought…I thought you were one of them."

"No," he replied, with an odd smile. "Wish I w-was."

_Why? They're nuts…so I've heard, anyway. All of them. Why would you want to be a part of that? Why would **anybody**?_

Jasper wandered off again, lost in thought, and I turned away from the bulletin board. There was a short flight of steps up to the second floor, but the door at the top was locked and my key didn't work in the lock. I slammed my shoulder into it a couple of times, but it wasn't going anywhere anytime soon. Even a good swing or two with my water pipe couldn't break the doorknob. Another dead end. My bad luck with doors was holding, it seemed. Well, at least the place was well-built. The door hadn't budged an inch.

As I came back down the steps, a piece of paper fluttered past my feet and stuck underneath a toppled bookshelf. I picked it up. It was a note to somebody about someone named Alessa who was missing, and the author was asking for a progress report on Walter. I didn't know of anybody named Alessa, but Walter…that name kept popping up. Maybe he'd lived here, when he was a kid. Poor kid. This had to have been a hell of a depressing place to grow up in.

There was a door near the back of the room. The door was locked tightly, and it wouldn't budge, either. Of course. As I turned away in disappointment, my eye caught a threadbare book lying on the floor on top of the remains of a collapsed table. As I picked it up, the pages fell out of the binding and scattered on the floor. Most of them were too faded and fragile to read, but on one page several lines were still legible.

_The Second Sign  
And God said,  
Offer the Blood of the Ten Sinners  
And the White Oil.  
Be then released from the bonds of the flesh, and gain the Power of Heaven.  
From the Darkness and Void, bring forth Gloom,  
And gird thyself with Despair for the Giver of Wisdom._

_The Third Sign  
And God said,  
Return to the Source through sin's Temptation.  
Under the Watchful eye of the demon, wander alone in the formless Chaos.  
Only then will the Four Atonements be in alignment._

Cult writings if ever I'd seen them (and no, I really hadn't). Was this for real? It was all too weird. Blood sacrifice? Did anybody still do that any more? Not with people, that I was aware of…not since the Mayans, right? Or was it the Aztecs?

_The Mayans…_

That rang a bell somehow, but I couldn't quite remember why. There was also that "be released from the bonds of the flesh" stuff...that didn't sound like anything from any church service I'd ever heard of. It almost sounded like...like assumption, or dying, or maybe some kind of vision or hallucination. Did people really believe in this stuff? Whatever it was, it left me feeling very uneasy.

The door behind me was ajar now. I vaguely remembered hearing something squeak behind me as I'd stood there reading. Jasper must have managed to get the door open somehow. It was cracked, almost closed, and he was nowhere in sight. What worried me more, though, was the thick smoke billowing through the gaps around the edges of the door.

_Fire!_

I grabbed the doorknob, but it was already too hot to turn, and it burned my hand. As I eased the door open with the end of my pipe, the plaque on the outside fell to the ground. It was yellow, with wavy lines engraved on it. I picked it up and turned it over.

_Source_

Bells were definitely ringing now, but they were going to have to wait. Someone was screaming on the other side of the door, beyond the wall of smoke…

The room inside was hot as hell. There was a long table set up on the opposite side, with candles and chalices and a cloth, and tall candlesticks on either side, as tall as a man. The room was lit with a bright, flickering orange light, but it wasn't coming from any of the candles. In front of the altar was Jasper, with flames rising from his clothes and head. His flesh was glowing red and charring to black, and that's a stench that I know I can't describe at all. He was writhing and screaming incoherently and waving one of the chalices around. In short, he was burning to death.

I had to do something. What? I had no idea. But _something_. There was no source of water in the room, so I couldn't put the fire out. No point in telling him to stop, drop and roll, either.

_Shit! What can I do?_

I took a step toward him, but I hit a wall of heat that stopped me. The door slammed shut behind me, and there was nowhere to go and nothing I could do. Nothing at all.

As I stared helplessly at Jasper his hand began to move. The sharp point on the bottom of the chalice (why?) traced out the cuts on his chest that glowed yellow among the blackened remains of his T-shirt. Numbers.

_**17121**_

All I did was stand there gaping at him, uselessly. How had all of this happened in the few seconds between Jasper opening the door and when I entered the room? Nobody else was around…did he do this to himself? Why would _anybody_ choose to die this way? The pain must have been unimaginable…

I didn't know what to do. And, for the last time, Jasper came to my rescue. As I kept watching in horror, he took a long, ragged breath.

"I finally met him!" he crowed, hands up in the air. He…he…he was…_joyous!_ Happy! Ecstatic! What the hell? And his stutter was gone.

"The one the nosy guy talked about…the Devil!"

No, he wasn't only joyous...there was agony in his voice, too.

_You met...the Devil? And he claimed you for his own..._

He bent backward one last time, then collapsed onto his knees and sagged. As I watched him die, the flames spread to the floor, and then to the walls, faster than I thought possible. Suddenly, the entire room was on fire. I tore my eyes away from his charred corpse and desperately searched for a way out. The door was still jammed, and no amount of prying or slamming into it did any good. Just like the door upstairs.

I knew that I wasn't going to get out of there alive…I remember closing my eyes and hoping that I'd go quickly.

* * *

On my bed. Again. With no idea how I'd gotten there. Again.

The radio was playing. I could hear it through the wall. A newscaster was telling me about something that had happened in a forest. Before she got any further, I knew what was coming.

I didn't know that he was thirty, though. He looked younger than that. He was two years older than I was…and he was very, very dead. That should have bothered me more, but it didn't, and it hasn't since. No idea why. I do feel very bad about _that_. Jasper didn't deserve to die like that. Nobody did. At least, that was what I thought at the time.

The newscaster was still talking.

"Due to the marks on the victim, the police are investigating possible links to the Walter Sullivan case ten years ago."

_There's that name again. Walter...Walter Sullivan._

That was the first time that day that I heard his full name, but far from the last, as you know. I remembered it vaguely. Walter Sullivan had been involved with the Silent Hill cult. He was one of their orphans…so he probably knew that Wish House well. He'd gone on a killing spree ten years ago or something like that. Yeah, I remembered it now. I'd heard about it on the TV news when I was finishing up my application to PRU. He'd killed a couple of kids and mutilated them. The police had never said exactly how, or just what he'd done to them, but they were sure that he'd done it. He'd murdered several other people too, but the kids were the ones that got the most news coverage, of course. He'd been arrested for their murders, then killed himself in prison before he could go to trial. Stabbed himself with something and bled to death.

_That's doing it the hard way, I guess._

Walter…that was the same name that had been on that note in Wish House. Someone had wanted to know how he was coming along. That note must have been pretty old, then, because this Walter would have been several years older than I was if he'd lived.

The clues were starting to come in, and I needed to take a little time to start putting them together however I could. I had no idea where to start, though. I had the one plaque in my pocket…the other was sitting in my chest in the front room. Maybe together they might tell me something.

The doorbell was ringing, and somebody was pounding on the door. It was old Frank, the super. There's another guy with more than his share of sadness, huh? You probably know all about him now, but I didn't at the time.

What I did know I learned shortly after I moved in. On my way down the stairs one day, I overheard two of the other tenants standing by the mailboxes talking about him.

"He's not really that bad, you know. Yeah, if your rent is a single day late he'll hound you day and night about it, but he's always been good about fixing things. Heck, he had the plumber in about my sink the day after I called him about it."

"Yeah, that's true. He's kinda gruff, but he's not bad. Gotta cut him a little slack, anyway. After what happened to his family."

I don't usually listen to this kind of stuff, you know. But…well.

"His family? I didn't think he had one. Isn't it just him in 105?"

"Yeah, it is now. He had a wife and a kid, years ago. But the wife died when his son was young, and he brought up the kid by himself. Good kid, got married to a nice girl, decent job, bright future, you know, the whole thing. Frank was really proud of him. He'd boast about his son to anybody who would listen."

"Who wouldn't?"

"I know. Normally that stuff bugs me, but Frank was so proud of him that I didn't mind it much. The only time anybody ever saw him smile was when he was talking about his boy. But then the daughter-in-law got sick. She was sick for years. There were all of these medical bills…they drained him and his son dry. The son lost his job, too, and then their house, which made things worse. I think he ended up moving back in with his father downstairs when things got really bad. I'm not sure, though, since Frank didn't talk about it much. But Richard saw the son once or twice, so he tells me. Anyway, just before the end, the son took her to Silent Hill for a last vacation, and they never came back."

"You mean, they just disappeared?"

"Yeah. Without a trace."

"Oh my God. I've heard that strange things happen there, but still…that's horrible."

"Yep. Nobody's heard from either of them for ten years. It broke old Frank completely. He hasn't been the same since."

No, he really wasn't that bad. It took me by surprise when he helped me carry my stuff into my room when I was moving in. Not that I brought that much, but I appreciated the gesture. Plus, he was getting on in years, and he really didn't have to do it. I hadn't expected it of him, not at all.

He and I talked a little bit as we carried boxes up the stairs. He asked me how my job was going, that kind of stuff. Truth be told, I didn't know if he was making sure that I wasn't going to be late with the rent, or if he was just being friendly, but he seemed pleasant enough, so I didn't mind. At least I knew I was going to get along with one of my new neighbors. Then, when I was dumping the last of my things in the middle of the front room, he left for a few minutes and came back with a large frame under his arm.

"I want you to have this," he said. He held it up to show me. It was a huge old black-and-white photograph of what looked like Venice, taken on an overcast day. Despite the cloudy weather, the details of the buildings and canals stood out crisply. The image was stunning, one of the most beautiful I'd seen in years.

"I couldn't," I sputtered. "This…this is amazing. I can't accept this."

"No, I want you to, Henry," he said, pushing the frame into my hands. "I don't need it any more. I think you'll enjoy it more than I ever can again." He turned and walked out of the door, and I was left standing there with the picture in my hands.

It now hung above my couch. On those few occasions that Frank had come by to talk to me about something, I saw his eyes go to the picture, just briefly. His expression would soften, and then he would turn back to me and it was as if nothing had happened. Now, I wondered whose photograph that really had been…and what memories it brought to the surface for him. I made a mental note to ask him one day, when I caught him in a good mood. Despite what the neighbors said, it actually did happen, now and then. I'd never had any problems with him, at least. Never.

But for now, he was hammering at my door, yelling. So I did the same. He pulled out his keys and tried one in the lock, with no effect.

"I'm…I'm sure that I heard something in there," he muttered to himself.

_YOU DID! THAT'S ME! LET ME OUTTA HERE!_

"Yeah, that sound…"

_HELP!_

"…it's the same one as back then."

He turned away and walked off, muttering to himself.

My blood ran cold.

_Back then?_


	8. The prison 1

_Back then…_

When? And what? Did something happen in my room before? If so, I hadn't heard a single thing about it…not a damn thing. Ashfield isn't that big a town, and news travels quickly, but if it had happened a long while back I might not have been old enough to remember it. I had no idea what Frank was talking about.

Still, somebody should have mentioned something two years ago. Old news or not. Of course, who would have told me? Especially after I moved in? Wouldn't have done me any good, anyway. Not as if I wouldn't have rented the place. I knew that this was _it _the moment that I walked through the door, so there probably wasn't anything that Frank could have told me to change my mind. Still, Frank needed to rent the apartment, yes, but he should have said _something_. Whatever. It was far too late to worry about that now, anyway.

I was sitting on my couch with the two plaques in my hands. They were heavy and cold, like marble, but their texture was rougher and porous, more like sandstone. The Mayan woman with the veils danced on the Temptation plaque, and the yellow waves rippled on the Source plaque. I ran my fingers over the deeply carved outlines as I turned things over in my head. Temptation and Source. It was like a mantra.

_Temptation and Source…_

_Temptation and Source._

_And God said, Return to the Source through sin's Temptation._

Was I remembering that correctly? According to the piece of paper that I'd shoved into the back of my notebook for safekeeping, I was. There it was, as clear as day.

This wasn't a coincidence. Couldn't be. I could see how Cynthia (_Cynthia_…) might have been Temptation to somebody…she certainly had been to me, for just a little while. But Jasper, as Source? I didn't understand that at all. What would he have been the source _of_, anyway? All I'd heard from him was random talk about sacred stones and Nahkeehona and the Third Revelation. I shook my head. The images weren't going to be giving up their secrets yet. I put the two plaques back in the chest.

Then there was the thing about Mayans. Why did _that_ ring a bell? Easy. It was the style of the drawing on the Temptation plaque. It looked like the faces I'd seen in pictures of ancient carvings from temples and things, in magazines. Mayans drew blood during their sacrifices, right? Were they the ones who pulled out the hearts of prisoners of war and dedicated them to their gods on those tall pyramid temples? Or were those the Aztecs? I always got them confused. Never thought I'd need classical Mesoamerican history to get through the day, but there you are.

_The Blood of the Ten Sinners._

Blood…Mayans…the connections were there, but they didn't make any sense. Not yet. The _yet_ was what concerned me the most. I had a gut feeling that the answers were out there somewhere, but that they were well down the road…and that they were going to be worse than the questions.

Still, now I needed to go back through the Hole more than ever. Information was coming to me, bit by bit, and the sooner I got back the sooner I'd have a chance at finding more answers, whether I wanted them or not. I took a minute to update my map, and ended up writing "Jasper" in the middle, where the house was. That didn't make me feel anything at all then. It does now, though.

The Hole had changed again. It was larger. There were sounds coming through it, echoing down to me through its length. They sounded like the voices of children, but I couldn't tell if they were laughing or playing…or crying.

The children from the orphanage, maybe?

Guess it was time to find out.

* * *

Remember earlier, when I was wondering why I wasn't sprawled on the ground when I woke up in these places? Well, this time I started out face-down on a damp, moldy floor. So much for that. 

I knew right away that I was in a small, enclosed space, for a change. It was cold, and smelled of rotten blood and mildew. I thought I could hear my own heartbeat echoing off of the walls. Deep, shallow echoes. As I hauled myself up, the sounds of my movement traveled down the hallway and came back to my ears more loudly than I'd expected. It sounded like a bathroom, actually, down to the drips coming from somewhere I couldn't see. This was no bathroom, though. The walls were covered with reddish-blackish-gray tile, mildewed and moldy like the floor. They were curved in smooth arcs, one inside the other, and lit by bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling under plain metal shades. The inside wall held a door with a small barred window, like a prison door. Maybe this was some kind of weird prison, or maybe a mental hospital. It seemed as if the hallway might be circular. It would be easy enough to find out.

I wasn't alone. A voice came down the hallway from somewhere nearby, calling for help. So, I trudged off to see what was up. I passed another door on the inside wall, then another. Several feet down the corridor, I came across a small, damp piece of paper stuck to the concrete. I was just able to peel it off of the floor without ripping it in two. It was handwritten in a scrawling, shaky hand, and spoke of cells and death chambers and a code panel on a door somewhere downstairs from here.

_Huh. So this **is** a prison. But it's a prison with a death chamber. Capital punishment? Right next to the kitchen? That's a weird setup. _

_Whatever. I'm not going to worry about a code panel on a door I don't think I want to enter. Not for now._

I hadn't figured out yet that I wasn't likely to have a choice in the matter.

Further along, there were double doors in the outside wall. Just across from those doors was a big, balding guy in one of the cells, muttering and yelling. He was the one that I'd heard earlier.

"He's...he's going to kill me. Walter's going to kill me!"

The man sounded absolutely terrified. He thrust an arm through the bars and flailed around wildly. Something told me to steer clear of this guy.

_Walter again. Can't be that serial killer...he's been dead and buried for ten years. So who…_

Then, he saw me. "You there!"

_Crap. Wonder if I can pretend that I didn't hear him..._

"Yeah, you!"

_That would be a **no**.__Oh well._ I approached him carefully.

"Let me out!" he screamed in my face. His breath was as sweet as his manner.

I tried the door. "It's locked," I said.

"Well, I _knew_ that, or I'd have gotten out already!"

I glared at him. I've never been the most patient person with people, and this wasn't helping. _What is **with** everybody being rude today, anyway?_

The guy kept muttering and moaning, but there wasn't much that I could do to help. So I tuned him out, pulled out my notebook and pencil, and started exploring and mapping. It wasn't long before I came back to where I'd started. The floor was circular, with eight doors on the inside wall of the hallway. Some of the doors were unlocked, so I could see what lay within. There were wedge-shaped cells with hard beds, sinks, toilets and a small table in each...and a peephole to the center of the floor, high up in the wall. All of the fixtures were small, child-sized, and soon I remembered why they would be.

Among the many rumors about the Silent Hill culties is one about a tall cylindrical jail where they sent the orphans for regular punishment. It didn't matter whether they'd done anything wrong or not, all of the kids ended up there sooner or later. Part of the indoctrination, I guess. Well, unless there just happened to be _two _jails with pint-sized beds in the area, this seemed to be it. I had no idea what they called the place, but it didn't matter. Its function was obvious.

This was a prison, all right, but it was laid out in a way I'd never seen before. I'm getting ahead of myself here, but I've got to explain this now. It turned out that there were three floors of cells, a shower-and-kitchen area on the next floor down, and a basement floor at the bottom. I'd started out on the first floor of cells.

The three cell floors had eight cells apiece, just like the first floor, with a small round room in the center of each floor. This was a guard room, and it had eight peepholes, one into each cell, so one guard could watch up to eight cells at once. It was an ingenious design. The floors were connected by a circular staircase on the outside and by a ladder up through the middle, so the guards could move around freely with minimal contact with the occupants of the cells. Those kids probably could have gone for a long time without seeing anybody or talking to anybody, just hearing the guards' footsteps and knowing that they were being watched.

Speaking of movement, here's the really mind-blowing part of it. The cell floors could be rotated around. The second and third floors had wheels in the guard rooms that turned the floors to the left or right. I'd never heard of anything like it. God only knows how _that_ was engineered. This ended up having several uses...but I'll get to those later. The whole thing was powered by electricity, as far as I could tell, but the electricity seemed to be partially out when I was there. The lights in the halls worked, and the lights in the guard rooms, but the cell lights were out.

Like I said, on the first floor, some of the cells were locked, and some were open. There wasn't much to see in them once you got used to the layout. Everything was dirty and grimy and mildewy, and the sinks and toilets looked as though they hadn't been used in a long time. In one of the cells, there were these tall brown fungus-like things that stood easily a foot taller than me. They didn't do anything but stand there waving their bulbous heads at me, but when I brushed past one, it stung like hell. You know it's bad when a place is so scummy that the mold attacks you. Fortunately, I was able to take several down with a single swing of the steel pipe, so they weren't a problem after that first one. I just had to make sure that I didn't drop my guard and walk into a bunch of them. What was weird, though, was that once you hit them, they just shriveled up and disappeared…were they ghost mushrooms, or something?

Anyway, I finished my floor map, and retraced my steps past the guy in the cell to the double doors. Beyond the doors was a small room with vents high up in the walls, a door on either side, a Hole at the other end, and a note taped to the wall beside the Hole. According to the note, the only way to get into the middle rooms was through ...

_...corpse disposal chutes? What the hell?_

There were corpse disposal chutes in the cells, the note said. Apparently, you had to drop down through the chutes from the third floor to move around. What a stupid design...but not if corpse disposal was going to be an issue, I guess. That explained the locked doors that I'd found on the first floor. So, the kids were dying in the cells _and_ in the death chamber...this was incomprehensible to me.

_What did they **do** to these kids here?_

* * *

Back in my room, my TV had been left on (to static, of course), and somebody had slipped another piece of red paper under my door. 

_Lately I've been feeling like my life is in serious danger.  
I've been through a lot in my life, but I've never felt this kind of pure, animal fear. _

Yeah, I could understand that. The writer went on. He was investigating the old Walter Sullivan murders from ten years ago. Ten years...so why did he say seven?

_They were killed in a variety of ways,  
but the one thing they had in common was that each corpse had the following numbers,  
in order of their deaths, carved into them:  
01121, 02121, 03121..._

Just like the numbers on the coffin in the forest...and the numbers on Cynthia's skin, and on Jasper's chest. But…

Shit. Shitshitshitshit_shit_. There was no way. No goddamn way. It was impossible. Walter Sullivan had been dead for ten years. Everybody knew that.

_Must be some sort of copycat. That's it. Gotta be_.

But I couldn't remember having heard about the numbers before...it hadn't been in the news at the time. The police must have kept it secret. So how would a copycat know to do that?

* * *

In the little room in the prison, only one of the two side doors was open. It led to a long, enclosed spiral staircase that curved downward around the inside of the outer wall of the building. As I started to head down, I saw a red-palmed arm swing at me, and I jumped back. More wall-monsters. At least this time, I could stand still while I swung...or better yet, make use of the red metal ladder that led straight down next to the door I'd just entered. That seemed to be the best option, so down the ladder I went. There were double doors on the floor below as well, but they were locked. Naturally. At least the stairs seemed to be clear of anything dangerous further down. 

As I walked downward, my eye caught the gleam of something metallic on the ground by one of the pillars. It turned out to be a little silver disc, like a saint's medal, with a thin leather cord to hang it by. It looked as though it had been casually dropped there and forgotten…but it was still shiny, so it hadn't been there very long. The image on the front was of a Madonna and child. It seemed like an ordinary image at first, but as I squinted at it in the harsh light, I realized that whoever had sculpted it had produced an amazing level of detail in the faces, and it was plain to see that they looked alike. _Very_ alike. They seemed less like mother and child and more like…I don't know, really. Sisters, maybe. There was something very creepy about it, but I pocketed it anyway and continued down.

At the bottom of the stairs was an open door, and through the door was an enormous round room that took up the whole floor and was two stories tall. The steps continued about three-quarters of the way around the room, until they met the floor. Sunk deep into a large hole in the floor was a gigantic waterwheel. It was almost large enough to reach the ceiling, and it seemed to be made of wood. I had no idea that they were even _made_ that huge. There was no water running onto it, so it was still, and the room was very quiet except for the faint sound of sloshing water down below the wheel.

I leaned on the railing and updated my map, and then put my notebook away and just stared at the wheel for a little while. It was awe-inspiring and oddly beautiful. Timeless, even. The wood seemed very old and was worn smooth by the water, but it didn't look rotted at all. I wanted to run my fingers along it to see what it felt like, but it was too far away. Man, I wish I had had my camera with me. It would have made for an amazing picture. I can still see it as clearly as I could then...I'll probably never forget the sight. Guess you had to be there.

Near the bottom of the steps was a door in the outside wall, raised up off of the floor above a hump that covered the shaft of the wheel. Through the door was a huge engine room with a huge engine just inside. It was silent, which made sense since the wheel was also still. I idly wondered what was powering the bare bulbs and the lights in this room. There had to be another source of power in the building. What it was, or where it would be, I had no idea…but it might be behind the door at the other end, the one with the weird circular sign on it. Why not go look? It wasn't very far away.

…or maybe it was. Its normal size turned out to be an optical illusion. I kept walking and walking, and ended up standing at the foot of the biggest door I'd ever seen. It wasn't as huge as the waterwheel, but it was easily twenty feet high. The doorknob was bigger than my head, and way out of reach. I managed to wedge the end of my steel pipe between the door and the frame, and braced myself and pried with everything I had. After a few minutes of this, I had only gotten it open an inch or two before the door latch kept it from moving any further. So, this was a dead end.

Everything down here was huge, actually…the door, the engine, the waterwheel. It all dwarfed me. I'm a little over six feet tall, so I'm not the biggest guy around, but I'm taller than average. Usually things seem if anything too small to me rather than too large. This was a very novel experience. I hadn't felt this small since I was a little kid.

Back outside, a sign caught my eye. It was posted by the edge of the waterwheel well. I pulled off the key that hung over the sign and peered at the worn writing.

_To turn on the lights in the 3rd floor cells, turn this waterwheel.  
Remember that the water must flow in the direction of the waterwheel.  
Of course, you also have to open the sluice gate on the roof._

OK…so that meant that there was some kind of water machinery up on the roof of this place, and the lights on the third floor weren't going to do much unless it was running. Water to waterwheel to generator equaled power to the lights. Got it. But so far, the lack of lighting in the cells hadn't been a problem on the first floor, so I wasn't too worried about the lights on the third floor not working. Not when priority one was finding a way out of here.

Preferably without anybody dying on the way.

As I stood there thinking, a familiar buzzing and humming became audible. Time to hoof it out of there and see whether this old key I'd just found would open any doors…such as the other door by the Hole. It did, and I was back on the circular stairway. This part of the stairway ran around the outside of the building, exposed to the elements, and when I craned my neck backward I could see the whole staircase going up past two more floors to the roof.

I climbed a short ladder just by the door and found myself on the asphalt roof of the little room I'd just left. All around me was fog and water. Talk about wishing I had my camera with me…this was a sight unlike anything I'd ever seen before. (Yeah, I know I keep saying that.) The whole tower was surrounded by water. Waves crashed in the sea (_sea? Or lake?)_ far, far below, well below the level of the waterwheel in the basement. It stretched as far as the eye could see in all directions. There was no ground at all, and I couldn't see the bottom of the tower, either. It was as if the whole building was suspended in midair, like one of those legendary Chinese floating islands. I couldn't even smell the water this far up.

I stood there for a while, drinking it all in. There was a cool breeze blowing by, and the freshness of the air was a shock to my system after the stench I'd been living with for hours. I took a deep breath of it, and it made me a little dizzy. My feet felt unsteady, and I was suddenly very aware that if this building _was_ floating, a little wobble or tip would send me right off the edge into the water. Heck, a good strong wind could do the same. Hanging around out here wasn't the best idea. I turned back to the gray tower that rose above me, ghostly and mottled in the thin gray fog, and climbed another short ladder to the second floor.

This floor was laid out just like the first, but there were more of the local flora and fauna. I ran into a patch of those brown mushroom fungi in the hallway, and went to work on them, which didn't take long. Just as I finished off the last one, there was a wet _splat_ behind me. I spun around, but there was nothing coming down the hallway at me.

I had no idea what had made the noise, but whatever it was was close by…so I looked downward. Sure enough, at my feet was the biggest goddamn slug I had ever seen. It was about a foot long and a shiny, slimy bluish-gray, and was oozing happily along the floor, leaving a shimmering trail behind it. It must have dropped off of the ceiling or something, because it hadn't been there before. I stared at it in fascination for a moment.

_Ugh._

Then, it brushed past my foot.

_DAMMIT!_

OK, it stung me all the way through my boot. God knows how it managed to do that, but it did. Therefore…up came the boot, and then back down before it could strike again.

_SPLAT!_

It was like stepping on an ordinary slug, times ten. It actually _gushed_ slug ooze up my jeans and onto my leg and sock. Just what I needed, right? Something else to deal with. To the list of terrified, confused, adrenalined, and very, very tired, I added squicked. There was another one on the wall, zipping around faster than I thought slugs could move. I didn't want to have to do that again, but if this thing hit the floor and I stumbled over it…I'd rather be wandering around with slug guts on my shoe than shooting pains through my foot. I knocked it down and squashed it as before. _Splat._

As I lifted my boot up from its sopping wet corpse, I suddenly felt like a little kid again, like I had down in the basement. Like when I was five, playing with water balloons on the back porch in the middle of the summer. You remember. You'd throw one as far as you could, and it would make that same sort of wet splash when it hit something and exploded all over the place. Dad used to come out and help to fill the balloons, since I was too little to work the stiff old knob on the garden tap. After we had a big tub of them he'd set up the old rusty rake, business end up, several feet away and we'd take turns trying to hit the tines to make the balloons explode in midair. I knew that he was pulling his throws, letting me win, but I didn't care. It was too much fun watching the water splash all over the place. Then, when we got tired or ran out of balloons or it got to dinnertime, we'd pick up all of the little colorful balloon pieces together and put them in a bag and go inside.

Man, it had been years – decades – since I'd thought about those afternoons. Those were some of the best times I'd had with him. Standing in that hallway, thinking about it, it occurred to me that I didn't know which had been more fun…watching the balloons explode in a big wet mess, or laughing and being with Dad.

Guess these slugs reminded me of that. Squashing them into a wet, slippery pile of goo was fun. Who'd have thought? This place seemed to bring out the five-year-old kid in me. So, as I made my way around the floor, I worked on my swipe-and-stomp rhythm, and got my boots and jeans good and dirty. After all, if things went according to pattern, when I eventually got back to my room, it would all just disappear anyway.

There wasn't much else to see on the second floor. Some of the cells were locked, and some weren't, as they had been on the first floor. I could peer through the holes in the doors, though, to see inside. They were dark except for the light from the peepholes on the other side, but even in the dark I could see that a few of the rooms had huge round holes in the floors that took up most of the free space in the middle of the cells. Those were the corpse disposal chutes, presumably. And I thought that I was sick for killing mangy hellhounds. These people were doing something to these kids that was so horrible that they needed to build in holes to dump their bodies into. Regularly.

Jesus. What kind of god would do that to a little kid?

_Wait a minute…_

I pulled my notebook from my pocket and flipped back to the map of the first floor. I'd forgotten to look for holes there, of course, but it occurred to me that they'd have to be there, or the…bodies…the bodies would end up falling into the first-floor cells, and the kids in the other cells would surely hear and see what was going on. It would make more sense to have holes in the first floor cells, too, so that the bodies could drop down into an area that the kids couldn't get to, like that floor above the waterwheel that I couldn't get into before. There were probably holes in the third floor as well, for the same reason. Right…that's what the note by the Hole had said. You got to the surveillance rooms in the middle of the place through those holes in the floor. So, if I couldn't find another way out of here, that would be my next best bet. I'd have to figure out which holes to use to get down to that locked floor. I'd end up jumping from the third floor all the way down. Four floors. Hopefully the fall wouldn't kill me.

So, I went back down to the first floor and mapped out all of the cells with holes. The guy by the double doors was quieter this time, eyeing me warily as I passed by.

"Is there a hole in the floor in there?" I asked him.

"Hell no," he said. "If there were, d'you think I'd be stuck in here?" His mood obviously hadn't improved from earlier.

"Forget it." I turned to leave.

"Hey," he said. His hand came out and caught the shoulder of my shirt. He yanked me around to face him. He was stronger than he looked. "Are you gonna find a way to let me out?"

I shook his hand off of my shoulder. "I'll do what I can, but I'm still figuring out how this place works. Do you know anything?"

He shook his head. "No, I don't. I…I just woke up in this cell."

"Same here."

"Why are we here?"

"Good question."

He grunted. Time for me to go.

"I'll do what I can. But I can't promise anything."

"Thanks."

I just realized now, as I'm telling you this…he never asked if I knew _where_ we were.


	9. The prison 2

Up on the third floor, there were more slugs everywhere. I was happily walking along mapping and swinging and squashing when I rounded a curve and

_HOLY SHIT!_

Of all of the things I ended up seeing that day, that may have given me the biggest scare. Up until now, everything I'd run into had been a familiar shape…a dog, or a plant, or a bird or a slug. That gave me a handy frame of reference. Somehow, when you know _what_ something is, it's easier to deal with it, even if all you're doing is trying to figure out the quickest way to kill it or get past it.

What I was facing, now, was a creature that walked on two enormous arms and had a dark shaggy pelt like a yak or a mammoth. And two heads. Human heads. Pale-skinned little kids' heads, like something out of somebody's nightmare, side by side on top of the long dark hair. The eyes were squeezed shut, and one head sat lower than the other. It was taller and much heavier than I was. And it was standing there...

Looking at me...

_Pointing_ with one of its hands as it leaned on the other. Pointing at me. Like Uncle Sam on those old Army recruitment posters. "We want YOU!"

I froze. Slugs be damned. This double-headed thing was bigger than I was, it looked as if it could run faster than I could, and it sure as _hell_ knew that I was there. I had absolutely no idea what I was going to do about it. I heard it say something, but neither of its mouths moved. Then, it dropped its hand and started rumbling toward me.

I'd been wrong…it was _much_ faster than I was. It stopped a few feet away and pulled one of its hands back. I was just able to jump backwards out of the way before its swipe connected with the air where I had been standing. Then, to my surprise, it didn't lunge at me. Instead, it turned and ran away, and stopped after a few steps to stare off into the distance as if fascinated by some shiny object.

_What does this thing want?_

But I didn't have time to ask. I stuffed my notebook into my pocket and readied the pipe. Then, I moved up behind it at quietly as possible, doing everything I could not to slip in the slug guts splattered all over the floor. One false move and this thing would be on top of me in an instant.

Up close, it smelled like mildew and wet dog, times ten. I wound up my best major-league swing, took a deep breath, and let fly. All that did was get its attention. It turned around and stared at me as I backed away as fast as I could and readied myself for another hit. It seemed curious about me, as if it had no idea why I would want to hit it like that.

_You've got two brains. Figure it out._

A second swing, and it was rampaging back and forth down the hallway. It was going to be a lot harder to get close enough to let loose on it the next time. Still, I watched it carefully, and just as it was running toward me I swung for all I was worth. That knocked it to the floor, and a fast stomp to one of its heads was enough to finish it off. Now it lay motionless before me, faces-down in the muck, a dead mound of smelly wet hair. I caught my breath, and tried to figure out the weird rattling echoing down the hallway before I realized that it was the sound of my own teeth chattering in my head. It was several seconds before the pain of my nails digging into my palms stopped the sound.

Then, I remembered that I was standing out in the middle of a hallway, exposed, and it was possible that these things traveled in packs. I ducked into the nearest unlocked room to try to pull myself back together. As I was about to sit down on the bed, I saw that it was covered in blood…and that the stain was about the same size and shape as a little kid. I dropped down on the little stool in the room instead and put my head in my hands. They'd stopped shaking, and so had the rest of me. But I guess I hadn't known how rattled I was by all of this until that moment.

* * *

You know, I'd like to be able to tell you that I reacted to all of this by gritting my teeth, rolling up my sleeves and beating the hell out of everything I came across. That I was one of those people who is always at his best when adversity strikes, who always knows what to do, who makes sure that everybody is OK and then takes care of business. 

I'd _like _to tell you that, but I can't. I know that I could have handled all of this better. I _should_ have handled it all better. If I had, who knows if it could have been stopped earlier, if fewer people would have died. I don't know. I'd lived a pretty quiet and sheltered life as a kid, a life that I worked hard to preserve once I graduated college and entered the real world, and I guess that this was all so incomprehensible to me that I…

That's no excuse, though. I don't really know how to tell you what was going on in my head. I was beyond freaked out, holding myself together as best I could, and in moments like that one I came very close to losing it. All that I knew just then was that I was as far up a creek without a paddle as I'd ever been, and there was nothing that I could do about it except deal with things as they came and try to stay alive.

* * *

I don't know how long I sat there, but it couldn't have been more than a couple of minutes. I knew that I probably didn't have a lot of time to waste. The sooner I found a way out of here, the sooner this nightmare would end. _Suck it up, Henry_, I heard my father's voice say in my head. _You don't have time for this crap. Get over it and get on with it._

I lifted my head and looked around. The hole in the middle of the floor gaped like a huge round mouth in the darkness of the cell.

_Now I see what the big deal was about the lights. It's dark as hell in here. Might not be a bad idea to get those lights going, actually._

I wasn't OK, nowhere near it, but I felt somewhat better. Having something to do helped, a lot. I stood up and stretched. The noise of my joints popping was very loud in that little room. Just then, I heard a footstep, and the room fell into darkness, then lightened again. Something was moving around on the other side of the peephole, in what I'd guessed was…

_The guard room. There's somebody in there! Shit! What if he sees me?_

I'd been an idiot again. Of course, if there's a guard room, there could be guards, and I probably didn't want them to know that I was there. I slipped back out into the hallway and made my way to the other cells as quietly and quickly as possible.

I had to take out a wall-man in one of the cells to get at a box of bullets next to him. There was another double-headed monster, too, but now that I knew to watch out for them, I was able to get a feel for how they moved, and this one was a little easier to deal with. One of the rooms was full of brown mushrooms, and the journal on the table in there gave me a good idea of just what happened to the bodies once they went down the holes. I don't want to go into detail, not here, but these cult people were nothing if not practical, I guess...if you believed that what the kiddies didn't know couldn't hurt them.

I finished up my map and climbed up the ladder to the last floor. The huge metal double doors opened readily, and I was on the sunlit gray roof. The walls were tall, and edged with barbed wire. Fog swirled within them.

_Yep, there's the water for the waterwheel_.

It was contained in a large square pool that surrounded a small central room. Of course, the door to the room was locked, and it bore the same round symbol that I'd seen on the huge door in the basement, and on the cemetery door by the orphanage. Sensing a pattern here?

The pool itself was four-cornered, like the hole for the waterwheel downstairs, and each corner was blocked off by a little wooden gate that led to a deep hole. So, the water would run down these holes once the gates were opened…_and hey, over here's a wheel to turn_. It doesn't get more obvious than that.

The wheel was stiff at first, but eventually it gave way, and as I turned it around, it squeaked and the little gates lifted up and the water poured down into the holes. Man, it felt good to finally _do_ something other than bash things to death. I felt as though I might actually be getting somewhere now. Back downstairs to see if that was the case. The lights were indeed on in the third-floor cells. Glad to know that these anonymous note-writers weren't full of it. So, mission accomplished.

_Now, to figure out how to get out of here._

* * *

I sat down in a cell under the newly working lights and looked at my maps for the first, second and third floors. Hopefully, there was a set of holes that I could get to that would drop me straight down. And damn…sure enough, there were cells on the second and first floors that were locked, one above the other, and both were below a third-floor cell with a hole. Right in the eight-o'clock position. Ten to one that the cells below the one with the hole had holes too. Now, about that falling-to-my-death business…well, if the guards had to do this all of the time, hopefully it wasn't that dangerous. Hopefully. Lousy design for a building, though. You'd think they'd just take the stairs. They're guards, so they would have keys to get where they needed to go. But I didn't, so down the holes it had to be. I put my notebook away and headed down the hall again. 

Standing there looking at the hole in the eight-o'clock cell, it occurred to me that if I could get some forward momentum going, I might be able to overshoot the hole on the next floor and land safely on the other side. It was a long shot, but worth a try, and hopefully I wouldn't end up banging my head on the concrete as I went forward or something stupid like that. The floors were thick, and there wasn't enough space for a running start, so I just jumped forward and hoped for the best. Turned out that that was enough. I landed safely next to the hole on the next floor down. A couple more cautious jumps, and I found myself in a larger room shaped like a quarter circle, with shower heads along the walls, and a door…and two doubleheads out for my blood. Time to go.

The locked double doors that I'd come across earlier when I was on the enclosed stairs were now on my right. The door across from the one I'd just fled through was locked, but to my left there was a small hallway that ended in a large circular room with a ladder in the middle. It didn't take much thought to figure out where that ladder went to. Sure enough, on the next floor up I found myself in the first-floor central guard room. I was able to look through each of the eight peepholes and see into the rooms on the first floor, including the one with the bald guy in it. (He was still standing there looking out of the window forlornly. Geez, man, take a load off or something…)

There was an old metal desk and a chair in the guard room, and a note on the desk. That note told me something new. Well, a few new things, but as horrific as the thought was of those kids starving to death in their cells because nobody could be bothered to fix the doors, it wasn't of immediate usefulness. Apparently, not only could the floors be rotated, but it was possible to get into the "interrogation room" by the kitchen by moving the floors around. There was a bloody bed on each floor (I'd already run into the one on the third floor, so I knew that that was true), and if you lined them up you could drop down all the way into the kitchen area. Looking at my maps, I realized that that must be what was behind the locked door I'd just seen. Since it was the last area in the building that I couldn't get to, it probably was where I needed to go. Well, guess I'd be going through that code-locked door after all.

So, my next project was to get those rooms lined up correctly. What worried me was that I didn't know _how_ to rotate the floors. There weren't any obvious switches or anything here. So, I made sure that my gun was loaded (if there _were_ guards up there, they'd shoot me before I could hit them) and went up the ladder to see what was going on upstairs.

The second floor guard room was quiet. It was much like the first, except for two things…the note on the desk that explained the lighting system (_thanks, been there, done that, got it_), and the rusty wheel on a pillar across from the ladder. The note mentioned that the second and third floors were the ones that rotated, so this was probably the means.

_Only one way to find out._

I peered into the nearest peephole, then stepped over to the wheel and gave it a good turn to the right. It squeaked and complained like the one on the roof had. There was a loud rumbling sound, and the building rolled and shook for a few seconds. Now, the cell behind the peephole was different…there was a hole in the floor where there hadn't been one before. It looked as though the floor had rotated one cell to the right. So that was how it worked. A good haul on the wheel would turn the rooms in either direction.

The note I'd just read said something about keeping the kids in line by doing this, to freak them out. Starving in their cells, seeing nobody, hearing horrible things happening in other cells, and prone to disorienting torture at the whim of the guards they never saw…this must have been Hell on earth for them. I rotated the wheel back in the other direction, to put things back the way I'd drawn them on my map, trying to shake the images from my head.

Now, I had to figure out where the bloody beds were. I climbed back down to the first floor and marked the cell on my map (it was in the one-o'clock position), then back up to the second to do the same. But as I was checking the cells one by one, I saw something lying on a table in one of the cells that gleamed and glistened in the faint light from the hallway. It was in a room that I knew had been locked, so I probably hadn't been able to see the thing from the door. Even in the dark, though, I could make out its faint boxy shape, and I knew exactly what it was.

It was a stun gun.

It lay abandoned on a table, as if left there by one of the guards. The shape was unmistakable to me, because my mother carried one every day when I was a kid and it looked just like hers had then. That stun gun was a huge point of contention between my parents when I was growing up. She insisted that she didn't need it, but Dad always made her carry it. Said that a little Japanese woman like her was a prime target for muggers. Not that there had been any muggings in Ashfield as long as anybody could remember, but that didn't matter to him. And she was half Japanese, and he knew that (she took after her mother, not her father, so she looked more Japanese than Caucasian). But yes, she was small. Even before I hit puberty I'd been taller than her.

Anyway, I knew what a stun gun looked like, and this was definitely a stun gun. Could I figure out how to get to it? There was a hole in the floor of that room, so hopefully if I could get into the cell I could get out as well…and if I could rotate the third floor to put a hole above it, I could drop down into the room, pick it up, and drop down again to get back out. The map told me that the cell below it on the first floor had a hole in the floor, too, so I went up the ladder. There was another wheel, and no desk, but another note on the wall.

_The Secret Number for getting through the door in back of the kitchen this month is "0302".  
Thanks for your cooperation._

Of course it was. Bleh. But didn't that piece of paper I found on the floor when I first got here say something about punching in numbers? On that keypad that I didn't want to deal with? Notebook time...flip through...right there...yep, it did. Well, it was an easy enough number to remember. I worked the wheel until I had one of the unlocked rooms with a hole where I wanted it. Then, back down the ladders to go back up to the third floor.

When I got to the bottom of the ladder, I realized that I wasn't alone…but whoever was there wasn't about to attack me. Right there in the middle of the hallway was the bald guy from the first floor. Guess he'd gotten out of his cell and come down here for whatever reason. Now, he was down on his knees talking to somebody. At first, I couldn't see who it was…but then as I moved closer, I saw that it was the little kid from the forest. How had _he_ gotten here?

The guy was whispering, pleading with the kid for something. He sounded pretty desperate too, but I couldn't hear what he was saying. The kid just stood there looking unimpressed, though, and after a few seconds he turned around and walked out of the double doors, leaving the guy still on his knees, staring after him. The man jumped when I tapped him on the shoulder.

"Who is that boy?" I asked. "And who are you?"

"His name's Walter. Walter Sullivan," the man said.

_Walter Sullivan! What the…_

"I used to work at the orphanage," he continued. He slowly pulled himself to his feet. "Watching the kids. I'm Andrew DeSalvo."

He turned to me, and I saw the terror written across his face. Words came tumbling out of his mouth like water flowing over the old wood of the waterwheel.

"They tried to make it seem like an orphanage, but according to that town's Holy Scriptures, it was actually the center of their religion. That's all those kids ever heard…but he was different. That kid, Walter…he was really into that mumbo jumbo…"

I wanted to ask him so many things. _The orphanage…do you mean the one in the forest? The Silent Hill cult? Is this really their prison? And how can that be Walter Sullivan? He's far too young…and Walter Sullivan is far too dead._

But Andrew kept talking, and I didn't want to spook him, so I let him. He was getting more freaked out by the second. His hands were shaking.

"He'd talk for hours about it to anybody who would listen. Especially that 'Descent of the Holy Mother' business…scary…" He raised his hands to his head and stumbled away from me. "My God…oh…oh, my God…"

Then, he was gone, through the double doors to the stairwell. I ran after him and threw the doors open, but he had disappeared. Now, I had more questions than answers. As usual.

* * *

There was nothing to do but to keep going up the ladders back up to the third floor. That took a while…stairs, ladder, door, door, ladder, roof, ladder, ladder, door, hallway, door. Another careful jump through a hole in the floor, and I grabbed the stun gun and kept dropping down. It was a hassle, yeah, and I got plenty of cuts and bruises on the way down. But that stun gun ended up saving my butt many times over later on, so it was worth the effort.

I ended up in the basement kitchen area. There was no immediate threat, so I took a minute to examine my new acquisition. It felt familiar, and looked as thought it might still be in working order. Its battery compartment door was stuck shut, though, so until I could pry it open I'd have to be careful and only use it when necessary. Anyway, stunning those slugs into a stupor wouldn't be half as much fun as hacking and stomping them. I pressed the switch, and current jumped from one terminal to the other. The blue spark and sharp smell of ozone in the dark room took me back twenty years, fifteen…but there was no time for that now.

There was the number pad on the door, as promised. It was the standard three-by-four model with the last number at the bottom. That would be the zero, right? I had to guess…the room was too dark to see. I worked the buttons by touch, but nothing doing. Every time I entered the code, the lock buzzed at me. Was it broken? Well, I hadn't been the first person to get stuck here. _I don't know the numbers, and it was too dark to even see the panel, so I didn't go in_. That's what that note had said. Would be nice to be able to see the buttons, so I could be sure I was getting it right. But I had to be…weren't all panels like this laid out in exactly the same way everywhere?

Then I remembered. _Since each floor of this building can be rotated, you can light up any of the cells by matching up the holes_. Just like I'd just done to get to the stun gun. If I could line up the cells to let the light in to this room from the third floor, then I could see what I was doing. And now that I thought about it, lining up the cells with bloody beds would do just that. I hacked through some white mushrooms (same as the brown ones, but…well, albino), and headed up the ladder.

I know that it didn't take more than a few minutes on each floor to line up the cells, but it seemed to take forever and a day. The grinding of the gears and the squeaking of the wheel echoed very loudly in the little round rooms. It was like nails on a chalkboard after a while, but I gritted my teeth and got on with it. And it felt damn good when I finally checked my map and verified that everything was lined up and ready to go. Light filtered down onto each of three bloody beds, one on each floor. Time to get the hell out of this place.

Back down the ladder and up the stairs again. A few minutes later, I stood at the edge of the third-floor hole, took a deep breath, and started the descent one more time.

_What was I going to find behind that door?_

The room was better lit this time. I could see the pad clearly, and I knew right away why the code hadn't worked before. This was the only three-by-four number pad I'd ever seen that started at the bottom and went to the top. What the hell? Stupid design, but what are you going to do? I leaned in closer and reached for the buttons.

I swear to God, my heart stopped beating when I saw the rectangular plaque on the door. Another plaque, another locked door…

_Please tell me that this doesn't mean what I think it means._

This one had a large eye on it, with rays radiating out like an old picture of the sun. It was the same size and thickness as the others, and came off of the door readily. I entered the code into the number pad with a shaky hand, and finally I heard the little _beep_ that told me that the door was ready for me. I wasn't ready for it, but I couldn't worry about that now. I steeled myself and turned the knob.

The room beyond was different. Round tiles were set into the walls in a honeycomb pattern. Huge round saw blades and metal racks and other …things hung from the ceiling. The floor of the room was mostly submerged but for a little space by the door and a metal walkway to its center. Everything – the walls, the saw blades, the walkway, _everything_ – was covered in old and fresh blood. The water in the room slapped heavily against the walls, and there were green and black oily patches on its surface. The smell was truly indescribable. If the room with the hole and the number pad was the…_dropoff_ (ugh), then this must be where…

_Oh God. _

I remembered the words from the diary that I'd found in one of the cells…the one that talked about the death chamber behind the kitchen, and what happened to the kids who died there. It had been clear as day.

_Beef stew._

I'd read it before, but it hadn't really hit me until that minute. I wanted to throw up, but I couldn't. Then, I saw Andrew floating face-up at the other end in a spreading pool of blood, and all I could see were the red lines on the belly of his shirt.

**_18121_**

Somehow, I was standing over him now, watching him bob up and down in the water. His mouth was slightly open, and his sightless eyes were staring up at the ceiling. He looked so peaceful. The terror on his face was gone, but now he looked surprised. _I_ was the one expecting to die any minute, not him…no wonder he looked surprised.

Then, a drop of blood fell from the ceiling and splashed onto his face, just next to his nose. It ran down his cheek and into his eye, pooling around the lower eyelid. I could see that it was separating, clear fluid running into his dead eye in one direction, thick red liquid in the other…onto the white of his eye and down under the eyelid…

I had just enough time to turn away and drop to my knees before I leaned over the rotten water and retched my guts out into its depths. Not that there was much to bring up, of course…I'd eaten very little over the last few days. Still, it made my stomach feel better, and I knew from past experience that that would last for about fifteen minutes or so before I felt like crap again.

My hands were gripping the edge of the round metal platform, which was slippery with mold and slime. I realized that they were shaking a moment before I felt my palm start to slide, and I nearly fell headlong into my own bile, which was spreading through the water slowly as it sloshed. Instead, I threw myself backwards as hard as I could, and ended up cracking the back of my skull on the center column on the platform.

That was the last straw. I couldn't take any more. I curled up on the rusty metal in the middle of that stinking room in the basement of that nightmarish prison with Andrew's corpse bobbing like a cork a few feet away and put my hands over my head and opened my mouth to scream. I don't know if any sound came out. I might not have heard it if it did. I remember shaking so hard that I had to reach out and grip the column with both hands to keep from vibrating myself right into that pool.

I laid there for the longest time…

* * *

On my bed. 

Time was passing when I was in those places, it seemed. The amber late afternoon – early evening light was coming in through the windows now. I loved that light on a normal day, the way it turned everything to oranges and browns, but now it was a reminder that time was passing and that I still hadn't found a way out of this nightmare. And soon it was going to be night for real, and things were only going from bad to worse.

As soon as I opened the bedroom door, I heard the shower running.

_Sure would be funny if whoever was doing this stuff to my apartment was in there washing off_. _Maybe I could go all Psycho on him and…_

_What am I thinking?_

There wasn't anybody in there, of course. There was nothing but blood splashed all over the walls where the shower head had sprayed it into the tub. It had even soaked into the spare roll of toilet paper on the tank. The stink was familiar by now.

I heard voices outside the front door. There was more red paper there, slipped under the door, but it could wait. Outside in the hallway were Eileen and Frank, together this time and staring at my door in tandem as if they could do a Uri Geller on it.

_Yeah, I wish._

"How's it going with Room 302?" Eileen asked. As lousy as I felt at that moment, I had to smile at that.

_Not so well, but thanks anyway. How are you?_

"Well, I…uh…just tried to open it up," Frank replied, "but it looks like something's, uh…blocking it from the inside." There was something white in his hand, an envelope or something like that.

_Yep. Chains. But you wouldn't know that._

"Anyway, it's not the first time."

_WHAT?_

"You mean…the guy who lived here before?"

"And it wasn't just him, either. There's, uh, something _wrong_ with this whole apartment."

_GREAT. Just fantastic. Is that what you meant earlier, what happened "back then"? Do you mean, my room, or the whole building?_

_Oh, and you didn't tell anybody about this WHY? _

"Don't say that," Eileen said, rubbing her arms. Frank bent down and dropped out of view as she looked around nervously. "You're scaring me…"

After a second or two, Frank's head reappeared. "Well, anyway, I just slipped a note under his door." He saw the look on her face and frowned. "Don't worry about it too much. There are a … lot of strange things in this world…"

_Heh. Don't I know it._

Frank was still talking, which was a rare occurrence. "The umbilical cord I keep in a box in my room…lately, it's started to smell terrible…"

She stared at him as if he was crazy. "Huh? _Umbilical_ cord?"

"Oh, forget I said anything," he said, and turned away. She followed him uncertainly.

"But still…those noises…" she said as she walked away.

I know what you're thinking. Why the hell would anybody keep an umbilical cord in their room? Or anywhere else? Oddly enough, I know why. When I was a teenager, I asked my mother about my birth…where I'd been born, what it was like, all of that. We'd never discussed it before, and she seemed rather shy about it, but she could sense that it was important to me. I don't know why it was, really. But she ended up telling me all about Japanese birthing customs, as her mother had told her, and one of the things she told me was that sometimes the mother would keep her baby's preserved umbilical cord in a small wooden box. She hadn't kept mine (Dad didn't like the idea), but her mother had kept hers, and since my grandmother's death it had been in the safe-deposit box at the bank. It would be mine someday, she told me, and when it was, I should make sure that nothing happened to it. So it isn't as weird a thing as it sounds. Normal, actually, where my grandmother came from.

Why _Frank_ would choose to keep a cord, though, was beyond me. Maybe he heard about the legend and thought it was a neat idea. After all, he and his wife had had a son…perhaps that's whose it was. But from what Mom said, usually the cords were dry and mummified long before the baby was old enough to walk. So it wouldn't make any sense that a decades-old cord would have any smell at all.

Whatever. I didn't have time to worry about Frank's son's umbilical cord right now. Now, there were two pieces of paper under my door, and hopefully whatever Frank had to tell me would be helpful. No such luck, of course. The envelope that had been so white and crisp a moment ago was now so soaked in blood that I couldn't open it, never mind read it. So, that was another dead end.

But whoever was leaving me these red notes had come up with a winner this time. This one told of a kind of sword that he'd found by the orphanage, with a wooden triangular handle with writing on it. Apparently, the thing was really heavy, but it could do some serious damage to the ghosts out there.

_So he knows about the orphanage and the ghosts, too? Does he know what's going on? He's got to. He's seen them._

There were only five of these swords. Well, so far I'd only run across a handful of ghosts, so that was enough…that is, if I could find any of them. Too bad you couldn't fit a heavy sword inside one of these red notes. For whatever reason, the date on the note caught my attention.

_July 23. It looks like a page from a diary or something._

I dug out the other red notes...they all had dates, too. I put them in order, but so far they weren't telling me much of a story.

So, I plopped back down on my couch and emptied my pockets. The plaque I'd found in the prison's kitchen was the same weight and material as the others, but this one said _Watchfulness_ on the back.

_Return to the Source through sin's Temptation. Under the Watchful eye of the demon, wander alone in the formless Chaos._

Andrew had said that he had worked at the orphanage, watching the kids. That fit the pattern. So, if this was going to keep up (and it sure looked as though it would), the next person to die would be Chaos.

Then…then the list ended. What would happen then?

The plaque went into the chest to join its brethren. The red diary notes went back into my notebook. And I went back to my couch to rest and heal and watch the slug guts melt off of my boots.


	10. The buildings 1

I lay there on my couch for a couple of minutes. All of that fright and tiredness and everything else...it was all starting to melt into a feeling of numbness. The more I saw, the more I realized just how little I understood what was going on. Trying to figure it all out seemed more pointless each time I came back here. Hell, I was having enough trouble figuring out _what_ was happening. I was visiting strange places, monsters were attacking me, and people were dying. That much was clear. Beyond that...well, if there was something happening beyond that, I wasn't aware of it.

(Can I stop here and say that I know how whiny that sounds? Poor, poor widdle me and all that crap. I know. I don't mean it like that, not at all. That's not me, never has been. But...I don't know how else to tell you what was going on in my head.)

Anyway, back to the basic questions. I had to start somewhere.

_Who_…well, I knew who was dying (too late, each time, always too late). One way or another, I ended up meeting each person before he or she died. What I _didn't_ know was who was killing them. _Somebody_ had to be. You don't carve yourself up like that and throw yourself into a pool of green acid whatever, or splash your own blood around a ticket booth, or light yourself on fire in a cult chapel. That's not how anybody would choose to go. There are easier ways. Somebody or something was killing these people, one by one.

_Where…_ that was easier. Each time around, sooner or later, I figured out where I was. Not that it made much sense when you looked at everything all together…there didn't seem to be anything common to the places I'd been except that they all had monsters and/or ghosts. And that somebody always had to die, behind a door with a plaque on it. The prison had been weird in itself, but the subway and forest hadn't been innately strange...they'd just been altered to be more surreal. Each was its own separate nightmare.

_When…_that wasn't one that I'd asked myself much, but now that I was thinking about it, it was a good question. The old token machines in the subway had me wondering, and the note about Walter in the orphanage and the little kid with the same name as a serial killer who died a grown man ten years ago…yeah, those would make you start to ask questions. But after every death, it seemed that things had been happening now, not in the past. I could see the cops outside the subway still, and the radio told me about Jasper's death…so _when_ was a damn good question. It was as if this was all happening at some other time. Neither now nor then.

_Why_ wasn't even worth thinking about yet. _How_ was beyond me too. I had the feeling that figuring out the first three would go a long way toward answering the last two...but that wasn't going to be happening for a while. For now, I was good and confused. Really confused...more confused than scared, even. I'd been even more disconnected from reality than usual these past few days, and at this point I could feel my grasp on it starting to slip.

What I really needed was a dose of normalcy. Banality. Ordinary people living their lives. Wasn't going to find any of that in my happy little home, not today, so maybe it was time to take a page from Richard's book and check out the neighbors. Not as if any of them could see me anyway, right? What the hell. Why not?

The hole in the wall was an obvious starting point, though I ended up feeling like a stalker whenever I used it. Eileen was sitting on her bed in the orange light, her far arm up and the near one reaching across doing something I couldn't see. It took me a few seconds to realize what she was doing. She was shaving her armpits. I didn't envy women that, having to shave large portions of their bodies every day or two. Hell, it was enough of a pain to scrape my own jaw every morning. Usually, I shaved every day, even on days when I knew I'd be home all day. But, I'd stopped the day before, since it seemed pointless to shave with nobody else around. So between that and being in bad need of a haircut I probably looked like hell, but whatever. As if it mattered just then. At least I didn't have to do armpits _and_ legs regularly. It was taking her a while, so I left her to it.

Meanwhile, the neighbors across the way were doing whatever people usually do around that time of day. The kids in 206 were home and bouncing around the apartment, and the nurse who lived below them had gotten back from her shift and was sitting on her couch watching TV. The music fan in 107 was dancing around with his headphones on, and Richard in 207 was…taking a nap, of all things, stretched out comfortably on his bed fully dressed. Weird…usually when the kids next door got boisterous you could hear him yelling at them all the way across the courtyard. But now he was sleeping through all of the noise. Go figure. Must be hard work being that pissed-off all the time, I thought.

_Time to get going, Henry. Chaos isn't going to wait all day, right?_

The Hole was bigger again. The voices had changed, too…there was just one now, and it sounded like a woman's voice, crying and gasping.

* * *

Face down again, of course. But this time, I was on dry pavement. The space was confined like before, and cold, but not as small as the prison hallways had been. The light was dim. A soft glow was filtering in from behind me, and I could feel its warmth through my clothes. I pushed myself up slowly (the grogginess was getting worse), and took a good look around. 

I was standing in another world of concrete. Everything was gray. The walls extended as far up as I could see, along with the large pipes and valves that stretched themselves along the flat gray surfaces. It was like the subway station all over again, but without the subterranean feel... more like a commercial building site, or a back alley in the middle of the city. There were windows in the wall far above, and below them square metal heating ducts running parallel to the floor. The corridor extended about a hundred feet or so in front of me before turning left. Random pieces of junk and an old lamp were piled in the corners. Behind me, several feet off of the floor, was an open door through which diffuse white light poured. The sun was setting in Ashfield, but here, apparently, it was still daytime. So _when_ was a factor here, too. The walls were stained with dirt and rust, so they couldn't have been very new. When was this?

…and why was there a Hole right behind me? I had zero need for it right now. Maybe later on I would have to come all the way down the corridor, back here, to get back to my room. That didn't bode well for my tired feet…but clearly, there was nowhere else to go but forward. So forward I went, leaving the warm sunlight behind me.

There were noises echoing down to me from far above. At first, I thought they were bird chirps and squawks, like you'd hear in a zoo. But as I listened longer, the noises seemed stronger, and louder. If there were birds, they sounded like some _very_ large ones. As I looked up, I caught a movement, then another. _Something_ was jumping across the gap between the walls, far above me. I couldn't really see what, but whatever it was, there were a lot of them, and they kept leaping from right to left as if swarming. Like a flock of birds, but they didn't seem like birds. Then, one jumped across just above me, then another…and I could have sworn that I saw legs and feet.

Past the bend, the walls turned into corners, and I was on an open slab of concrete with a small water tower at one corner and a door that wouldn't open at the other. From here, steps led down, and I could see other open areas with railings and stairs and large rooftop ventilation fans, and the walls of buildings facing out onto those slabs. It was a strange layout, like a jumble of building parts all shoved together. Still, there was something familiar about the area that I couldn't put my finger on just yet.

What was well beyond unfamiliar and all the way to weird, though, was the old sedan that was parked to one side. Not the car itself, which was a beat-up two-door that looked a lot like Jasper's old car. It was more that it was there in the first place. There was no way that anybody could have gotten anything larger than a bicycle up here, not without airlifting it. But there it was, parked neatly out of the way against the wall. I peered through the windows. Empty. No helpful notes here.

The caterwauling from earlier was still ear-splitting, and now there was also a metallic banging and slamming, too. Something was screeching, and screaming, and barking…multiple somethings, it sounded like. Yeah, whatever those things were, they were big and noisy as hell.

I wandered over to the fence by the water tower and looked out over my surroundings. Out here, beyond the corridor with the Hole, the night sky stretched above me, and blackness surrounded the buildings. So, it was night out here. A light breeze wafted the scent of old dirt and oiled machinery past my nose, but the air was cold, and I shivered a little. Suddenly, I felt a heaviness come over me, and after a few seconds I realized why.

_Gray. It's all so gray._

It was a depressing contrast to the watery, misty prison I'd just come from. That had been bloody and damp, but at least there had been some color there, and sunlight and fresh air and open water. The forest around Wish House had been gray, too, but in a different way. There had been trees, wood, rocks, soil...organic things. This was just flat black and gray concrete and metal, interrupted by harsh lights and roof fans and dirt and rust. Everything was old and worn and stained and lifeless. Despite the open black sky that stretched above me, it felt like a tomb.

I turned back and headed down the steps. As I made my way down, I heard a new sound. In the middle of the noise was a faint human voice. I couldn't make out the words, but it sounded like a man's voice, yelling. Then, a booming gunshot...and another. Somebody was up there, being mobbed by unknown screaming _things_…and he was fighting for his life. I had no way of helping him out. There were no ladders or stairs or anything that I could see that could get me up to the rooftops. So I kept going down the stairs.

As soon as my foot touched the bottom step, a _thing_ dropped down from above in front of me. If I'd thought that the doubleheads were freaky…this was almost as bad. It looked like an enormous, pinkish-gray (of course) hairless ape. It seemed as though it would have been taller than I was if it had stood up straight, but it stayed close to the ground. What it gave up in height, though, it more than made up for in sheer muscle mass. It had a short little pointed tail, too, that waggled as it ambled toward me. It was almost comical, or it would have been in a zoo. The thing even _sounded _like an ape. But its head had somehow lost its shape, as if it had melted, and now seemed to be hanging there in two smooth, distorted lumps, one with eyes and one without. Both were pointed in my direction, and this thing looked as though it could beat me into a pulp without breaking a sweat. I started backing up the stairs, trying to buy a little time to figure out how to either whack it into submission or get around it.

_No, getting around it isn't an option. Its reach is too long and it's probably pretty fast. I'll have to beat it down. But it looks strong, so that could take a while. I could shoot it, I guess…_

I pulled the gun from my waist and fumbled with the safety. Of course, at that moment the thing lunged toward me, and I lost my balance…and dropped the gun. It slithered between the metal steps and clattered to the concrete below. _Good one, Henry._ Well, so much for that.

_Wait…there's one more option. This thing is made of muscle. So maybe…_

I started backpedaling up the steps. Naturally, I stumbled on the way up. The ape lunged for me, and I just managed to roll out of the way and scramble on my hands and feet like a crab up to the cold steel landing at the top. It was almost on top of me now, and as it leaned forward I grabbed my stun gun, flipped the switch, and jabbed it up into the thing's chest. It screamed once and jerked backward, and as I watched, it lost its balance, bounced down the steps and hit the bottom _hard_. Now it was flat on its back, twitching, but it probably wasn't going to stay down for long. I flung myself back down the stairs (thank God I didn't break my idiot neck) and managed to put my boot through its skull before it could get up again. Granted, using the stun gun was less satisfying than planting a pipe through its midsection, but it was a lot less work and a hell of a lot more effective. I'd have to be damn careful, though, or I'd keep getting nearly trampled by these…whatever the hell they were. It was probably best in one-on-one situations.

_Was this…was this one of the things I saw earlier? Jumping between the buildings? If so, there are more of them around. A lot more._

I retrieved the pistol from below the steps and headed down the next set of stairs. There was another car there that looked just like every other car I'd seen that day, and a door. Large red neon letters blazed out toward the street from the fence beside me. They were backwards from my perspective, but looked familiar somehow, so I started to puzzle them out.

**H…O…T…E…**

…and I heard a human scream coming from above that came closer with every passing second. Before I could turn around, a heavy _thump_ told me that whoever was doing the screaming had landed on the ground right behind me. He was probably pretty badly hurt, too. Had to be. Falling several stories onto solid concrete couldn't be good for you...

...or maybe not. Damned if I didn't turn around to see Richard, of all people, hauling himself up and looking only a little worse for wear.

"Where the hell am I?" he muttered, rubbing his head and looking around. As soon as he saw me, though, he sat up and raised his hands, and I saw the old, heavy-looking revolver that he always kept tucked in his belt pointed straight at me. Yeah, it was Richard, all right. I backed away as quickly as I could, hands up.

Then he lowered his gun. "Ah," he said with relief, "you're a real person." He shook his head. "Hard to tell around here, what with all the..."

_Whew. That was way too close._

He squinted at me. "Hey, you're the guy who lives across from me, right?"

"Yeah." Might as well be as friendly as possible. For once, I was with somebody I knew (sort of), and we both had weaponry. Maybe we could get out of this together. So, out came the hand. "My name's Henry." It felt weird to be so formal under the circumstances…but what are you going to do?

Richard just stared at my hand with a look that said that he wasn't impressed. "I'm Richard Braintree," he replied. "From 207." I dropped the hand as he looked around warily. "What the hell's happened to us? That hole…and this freaky world…"

_Hole? He sees the Holes too? But…nobody else said anything. What does that mean? That must be how he got here, right?_

I watched him pace and think. His tie caught my eye. The picture on it was from some Baroque or Rococo painting or something. It was an image of a woman…a woman smiling indulgently at something that I couldn't see. _Weird image for a tie..._

Richard shrugged. "I don't know. It doesn't make any sense. But if you're here too," he said, waggling a finger at me, "then there must be something wrong with the whole apartment building." Yeah, Frank had said as much…and Richard was right. If we were both here, then it wasn't just me. That...that wasn't good.

Richard was still shaking the finger and talking. "That must explain what happened to that other guy too…"

That stopped my thoughts cold. "What other guy?" I sputtered.

Richard was pacing again. "The guy who lived in 302 before you. Didn't know him well, but he seemed like an okay guy. Didn't cause trouble. A journalist…he disappeared one day. Nobody knows what happened to him. He got pretty crazy towards the end…shut himself up in his room and wouldn't come out…"

_That must be what Frank was talking about. The guy who lived in my room before me that Eileen mentioned. Disappeared into his room and never came out…just like me. I wonder...did he see the Holes too?_

"Anyway," Richard said, breaking through my thoughts. "I'm getting the hell out of here." He started toward the door, then turned his head back and said, as an afterthought, "You should too – if you know what's good for you."

_But…our chances would be better together._

"Wait!"

He stopped again and stared at me expectantly, with annoyance written all over his face. Then I remembered how easily he went off around the apartments, how he'd start yelling and waving that revolver around if something ticked him off. He'd probably been the one fighting those screaming monsters up on the roof earlier, and he was probably pretty pumped up and pissed off right about now. No, I _knew_ he was, from the way he had leveled that gun at me a few seconds before. If I stuck with him, I'd have to balance the potential of those bullets being able to take out those ape-men with the likelihood of one of those bullets taking _me_ out if I got in his way.

So I just said, "Watch out for that kid."

He waved his hand dismissively at me and vanished through the door...and that was that.

_Well, crap. That throws another monkey wrench into things. If it's not just me here, it's got to be something going on with the whole building. Like Richard said…and Frank, too. That means that anybody who lives there could be…oh God. How many other people are going to be sucked into this before it's all over?_

What could I do? I couldn't warn people, of course. I couldn't stop it from happening since I didn't even know _what_ was happening, never mind the who or how…and I wasn't going to run through all of that stuff again. Not right now. So, the only thing that I knew I could do was try to get through this and, if I wasn't going to make it, at least I could take as many of the monsters with me as I could so that anybody else who got stuck here stood a better chance.

_...if I wasn't going to make it_. Remember earlier, when it first occurred to me that things might be more than a little dangerous? That something might happen to me? This was the first time I can remember actually thinking as if I knew that I was going to die. As you can probably guess, it wasn't the last. For whatever reason, the thought didn't bother me very much just then.

Where _was_ here, anyway? The red neon letters might tell me…

_That's it. Hotel South Ashfield. This is the hotel across the street, the one that I can see from my window._

But it didn't look at all like the wide, flat roof of the hotel across the street. This was small and narrow, and the multiple levels and stairs that I'd just come down didn't exist on top of the hotel I knew. Squint as I might, I couldn't see South Ashfield Heights from here, either. Anyway, what was up with that car? It was worth looking inside, given what I'd found in Jasper's car earlier. No reason not to look.

As I reached for the door handle, there was a _thump_ behind me…and then another _thump_ in front of me, and I was stuck between two more ape-things. Thank God for that steel pipe. I got out of it with a gash on my arm, but nothing worse. The car door was locked, anyway, so I went through the door Richard had used a few minutes earlier.

There was a little wooden hallway just beyond, with a few locked doors, and then at the other end was the last thing I expected to see in this place…a cozy little room with a kitchen area and a dining table. The big circular table was covered with balloons and wrapped presents and colorful streamers and a round white cake, and forks and plates as well. A bottle of champagne was there, unopened, with champagne flutes next to it. Cobwebs lay heavily over everything, but the cake didn't look moldy or crumbly or anything. Somebody was having a birthday party, it seemed, and I was invited. Or maybe I was crashing. Whee.

_Hey, I've got a few dead monsters I can pitch in, if that helps…no gift wrap, though, sorry._

One of the chairs had been knocked over, and as I squinted at the used plate on the ground next to it, I realized that I wasn't the only guest in the room. There was this wet, burbling noise coming from the floor on the other side of the table. I readied my pipe and crept forward, but nothing jumped at me or swiped at me or even growled a little. There was just a ghost on the floor, a youngish guy in a ratty sweater and pants lying there wiggling slowly. The blood on his chest was the only spot of color in the whole room apart from the paper streamers. As I moved closer, nothing happened…no headache, no arm through my chest, nothing. Instead, I saw that he was pinned to the floor with

_a sword with a triangular wooden handle._

Whoever was giving me the red notes wasn't kidding, then. This must be one of those swords, one of the five that he said were really good against the ghosts. How good? This ghost couldn't move, couldn't grab me, couldn't hurt me at all. He was completely out of commission as far as I was concerned. And that was fine with me.

I knelt down to grab the shiny object from his hand (a key, it turned out), and peered at the writing on the handle of the sword. It was illegible, of course, but it didn't matter. I could see what the sword did, which was the important part. I reached for the handle, but stopped. As useful as it might be against other phantoms, it was in use _now_, and as long as I didn't pull it out of him, this one was down for the count. Perhaps it was best to leave it where it was for now…I might regret it later, but this was a bird in the hand that I couldn't afford to let get away.

The ghost's eyes looked at me for a few seconds, then moved toward the birthday cake and stared at it longingly. Had it been _his_ birthday party? What a crappy way to go. I shook my head. "Sorry, man. Some birthday."

The key opened the locked door next to him, and then I was on the landing of an enclosed metal staircase. There were slugs on the floor and around the glowing red panels on the walls, but these were red slugs, not blue, and more rounded. They still squished satisfyingly, though, I can tell you. Very satisfyingly, especially since I was still bleeding all over the place from the gash in my arm and I wasn't up to being attacked by something more aggressive.

Down a few flights of stairs was a little enclosed hallway with two doors. Beyond the second door was what looked like a storeroom…or what was once a storeroom. There were freestanding shelves that were crumpled and listing now, almost empty but for what looked like a skin of some unknown animal, lying abandoned. It stank terribly, but the smell was familiar by now, so at least I knew what it was. On the bright side, somebody had left some ammo on the shelves for me. As I pocketed it, I saw that the walls had separated in the corner behind the shelves and I could see into whatever lay beyond, but there wasn't much there apart from a light bulb. I couldn't get through the shelves to the space, anyway.

The next room had three doors and a Hole, plus a counter with a cash register, and shelves with assorted things on them. As I poked around, I saw jerseys and volleyballs and golf bags with broken clubs. So, this had once been a sporting goods store. I vaguely remembered that there was one by Fuseli's across the street. I'd only been in there a couple of times, to see if they had anything for that camping assignment a while ago. It was a bigger place than this, though, with windows and weight benches and wetsuits and all that kind of gear. This was just a one-room shop with no windows, nothing like I remembered. But the price tags hanging off of the golf bags read "Albert's Sports", so it was the same store…go figure.

Anyway, the place was a mess, as if somebody had picked up one of those broken golf clubs and gone off on everything in sight. The shelves were smashed, and things were scattered all over the floor. Maybe whoever had trashed the place had robbed it, too. There wasn't much left intact. Just shredded soccer jerseys and a basket full of volleyballs (more than a dozen of them...was volleyball that popular around here?) and broken golf clubs and baseball bats.

Hey..._baseball bats._ Leaning up against a wall. _I wonder…_

Most of them were pretty beat up, if not broken, but there was an aluminum one with a wrapped handle that was still in good shape. Man, I hadn't handled one of these since high school gym class. It was lightweight and heavy, and by way of testing I slammed it into the wooden shelf next to the bat rack. The wood splintered satisfyingly on impact. This thing was going to be more effective than the pipe…it was a little shorter, but I could swing it faster and probably do more damage. That was a reasonable tradeoff. _Nice._

_Sending this next one over the Green Monster…just over there. The windup…and the pitch. Oh, what a swing! And Townshend knocks it out of the park! And there's the Series!_

No, that had been my Dad's dream, not mine, and I'd spent an entire summer working at it until he'd given up again. All I'd managed to get out of it was a decent throwing arm. Dreams were good, though. To sleep, perchance to dream…of a world in which I knew what the hell I was doing, anyway. Yeah, my chances of getting out of here alive were roughly the same as those of the Sox winning the World Series anytime soon...approximately zero. But at least those damn undead beasts were going _down_.

I found an unbroken 5-iron by the golf bags next to the Hole, as well. Now, I truly had an embarrassment of weapons. Time to head back to my place and retire the water pipe for good.

* * *

Somebody was banging on my door again. _It's not going to do any good, _I thought, _but knock yourself out. I don't mind. Not like I'm here much anyway._

There wasn't anybody on the other side of the peephole when I looked, but there was a new message written neatly in blood on top of the eighteen handprints on the opposite wall.

_BETTER CHECK ON YOUR NEIGHBOR SOON!_

Thanks...I guess. _Not really possible, smartass. See, he's off running around those buildings with a revolver in his hand and a screw or two loose, and the last thing I need to be doing right now is popping up in random places, asking him "Are you OK?"…_

Oh. Wait. I looked out of the window. Richard was still on his bed as he had been before, but now he'd turned over and was facing away from the window.

I dropped into the chair by the bookshelf. Couldn't trust my own eyes any more.

_Richard's here now. But he was there, with me, just a little while ago. I saw him there, I'm sure of it. There's no way I could have dreamed that. _

_Dreams... _

A bunch of things suddenly came together in my head with an audible _click_.

On the table by my big chair was a red notebook. It had appeared there the day before, and I'd spent the previous afternoon pouring my thoughts into it, largely because I had nothing better to do by then. I picked it up, flipped to the next blank page and started writing.

_1. Cynthia thought this might all be a dream…her dream. What if..._

_2. The places I've been to seem pretty dreamlike. Things feel unreal. Like that huge door and engine and waterwheel in the prison…everything feels wrong somehow. Things are familiar, but out of order and moved around. Like a nightmare._

_3. Richard is asleep on his bed. He's been there since the prison. But I saw him just now, with his gun. So he can't have been there all this time unless…_

_4. Every time I come back here, I wake up in bed, groggy. Every single time, even when I don't go through a Hole. It never varies._

_5. That note from earlier, under my door…Mom, why doesn't you wake up?_

Therefore…

_6. This could all be a dream._

Yes, there was no other reasonable explanation. This had to be a dream…a dream from which I wasn't able to awake. In which case, I…

I had absolutely no idea what the hell was going to happen next. My subconscious could take me anywhere it pleased, and there was very little I could actively do about it. But, at least I was going to be safe at home in real life, in my own bed, when it did.


	11. The buildings 2

I was standing in the middle of the sports shop, taking a breather. Whatever was going to happen next could wait. After I'd sat in my apartment staring at the red notebook for several seconds, trying to figure out if I really believed in the dream theory, I dumped the steel pipe in my chest and got into the Hole as fast as I could. So many things were going through my head, vague and disconnected things, and I thought that maybe somehow, if I were back in the sports shop, they might make more sense. Yeah, I know. That doesn't make sense, either. It was just a gut feeling with no basis in anything. By this point, I figured, I might as well go with my gut, since nothing my brain could come up with was working out too well.

The 5-iron balanced nicely in my hand. It was straight as an arrow, and still pretty new. I bent over, overlapped my hands on the handle (pinky grip? Or no? Whatever. I know jack about golf), squared my shoulders, and swung at a point a couple of inches in front of my toes. The imaginary ball flew straight and true through an imaginary blue sky and landed softly on an imaginary green far, far away, just feet from the imaginary hole. Golf clap, everyone. A beautiful shot, Mr. Townshend. Now, if I only had a putter…

I laughed to myself a little. _Heh. I __**am**__ Tiger Woods._

I was more than a little punchy by now. So tired...tired of thinking, of running, of swinging and zapping and shooting, of everything. Being punchy and tired was better than being freaked out, better by far. But now it was easy to let myself get more than a little light-headed. Too easy.

Suddenly, I didn't want to stand there thinking any more. I didn't have enough of the puzzle to make any sense out of it, and for all I knew this was all just some wild nightmare that I was having, and so there might be no more sense out there anyway. Screw this. Might as well get on with it.

Two doors remained in the room. One was locked, but the other opened onto another narrow stairwell. Three stories down, I opened another creaky door, and I was in another shop with shelves running down the sides and middle and empty cages against the far wall. There were little oval signs hanging in the aisles, and bags and boxes on the shelves…and something's claws clicking on the floor as it walked. Didn't take much to figure out that where there's a pet store, there might be pets. Big undead ones. Time to try out my new bat.

A pink head poked around one of the shelves, and I wound up and swung. The bat went CRACK! smack in the middle of its forehead, and the dog dropped like a rock. Stomp.

_One strike and you're out. This __**is**__ nice. _I smiled at the bat, which was now bloody. _You are, as of this moment, my brand new best friend._

There was another one right behind the first, which made things easy. A third was prowling behind the register, but I'd deal with that later. There wasn't much of interest in the little pet shop, just dog and cat food (a _lot_ of it) and assorted supplies like rawhide bones and other things that I didn't recognize. (Never had a dog or a cat when I was a kid, so I wouldn't know.) I have to admit, the rubber chew toys did look as if they'd be fun if you were a dog, though, and I had no idea that pet collars came in such a range of sizes and designs…or that flea collars smelled so weird. Or that there were so many varieties of cat litter in the world. There was an open bag of dog snacks on one of the shelves, and if I'd been hungry I probably would have tried one. They smelled almost good.

_Worm pills. Ugh. Not going to think about __**that.**_

This place was in better shape than the sports store…just old and abandoned, not torn up. Heck, it looked as if the set of keys sitting at the far end of one of the shelves had been left there just a moment before. And, once I saw the tag that said "Albert's Sports" on the keyring, those keys were in my pocket and I was hurrying through the door on the other side of the store, leaving the place to the single remaining hellhound (and its bird-bat friends). At least it wasn't going to go hungry, right? I trotted happily down the stairs, but I should have known better.

I took two more steps forward and was ambushed by a ghost. I'd almost managed to forget about them, but here was a reminder, complete with shredding skin and ratty wool hat and insta-migraine. This one was faster and more pissed off, and it took a good beating with the bat just to get it out of my way long enough to push past it and get down the stairs to the next door.

See, that's when I started losing it, I think. Just a little. I don't mean like I did in the water prison, with Andrew. That was panic and terror and nausea and overload. No, I mean really realizing that my hold on what should and shouldn't be happening according to The Way Things Should Work was slipping and that there was no point in trying to hold on. It wasn't the ticking pendulum clock in that room at the end of the stairs, or the ordinary heavy metal office furniture that looked like it had been there since the fifties. It wasn't even that I couldn't open the door on the other side of the room. That was OK. No, it was the fact that the whole goddamn _room_ was upside down. I was walking on the ceiling, with all of the furniture suspended above me…and not in a happy music-video way, either.

_I hope that this __**is**__ a nightmare. If I could prove that it was, I'd be beyond happy. Because if it's not, that means that I'm going insane and I don't think I want that just now…_

As soon as I walked out of the door, the world turned back to normal (well, as normal as this place could be, anyway), and I made my way back up through the pet store to the sports shop. The key I'd just found turned in the lock of the last door without a hitch.

* * *

Outside was a large, outdoors metal staircase, like a fire escape. Blackness surrounded the building, just as it had before, and the gap between the stairs and the building next door seemed bottomless. I knew that I was several floors below where I'd started, but even then I had no idea how far up I was.

The moment I stepped forward, I heard chattering and banging from below me, and an ape dropped down right in front of me and waggled its stinking wattly heads at me.

_Zap. Whump. Crunch. Splat._

God, that was beautiful, how easy that was. You just had to be a little careful with your timing, maybe try to get around behind or beside it so it couldn't hit you first, and the things would drop like flies. I seemed to be getting over my aversion to weaponry and killing and blood. Pretty quickly, too. Dad would be so proud, huh? _Took you long enough. I knew you could do it. Maybe you're not such a pussy after all._

Then again, I was getting plenty of practice. They kept coming at me as I headed down the stairs and ran across the small concrete roof at the bottom. The yellow neon letters running down the side of the building told me that I was somewhere near the _Restaurant Fuseli_. I remembered the sign, which I saw every time I looked out of my windows, but like before the architecture was different…and what was the point of putting two elevators side by side on an exposed outside walkway, anyway? The way this place was put together made no sense.

Down below the edge of the walkway was another open space. In it was another car, a station wagon this time, with a Hole next to it. There seemed to be a short walkway connecting the space to the area by the elevator shafts. Maybe I could get there on one of these elevators. One was gone, but the other was present, and actually opened when I pressed the button.

The elevator was cool and dark. It was a freight elevator, with doors on either side, chain-link walls and floor, and three floor buttons on the control panel. The empty shaft next to me told me that this elevator was indeed one of a pair. And the best thing about it was that I was alone in there. There was nothing running or slurping or floating along to get in my way. I flopped back against the wall and caught my breath for a moment before the elevator suddenly started moving downward. I probably had several seconds before it reached the next floor and the doors could open…a few wonderful seconds to rest and _not_ think. I leaned the bat against my leg and let my mind go blank.

After a couple of seconds, there was a second noise echoing up the elevator shaft, a noise that sounded a lot like the racket my elevator was making. Then, I saw steel and chain-link on the other side, and the other elevator was passing by on its way up. In it was Richard with his revolver, leaning over in front of the little kid.

_Crap. Something's going to happen…_

The elevator kept moving, and I strained to hear what was going on.

"Are you the kid he was talking about?" Richard growled. "You live in that apartment too, huh?" The little boy just stood there staring at him, frozen in fear.

_No, he doesn't…I've never seen him before today. You of all people should know that, Richard._

Then Richard got a suspicious look on his face.

"Say…you look a lot like a little punk that I once caught sneakin' around there…"

He leaned in closer to the kid, who shrank back in fear.

"Do you know something about what's going on?"

Just then, the elevator stopped at the middle floor, and the boy ran out as the elevator doors opened. Richard followed him, yelling. I punched the elevator buttons frantically, but it kept going downward.

My elevator finally stopped at the bottom floor. The doors opened to a ladder going down, but before I could think about going there I had to find out what Richard was doing to that little kid. He'd looked at if he was going to shoot him, and I'd be damned if I was going to let him do that. I pressed the button for the middle floor, and waited as the elevator rose slowly. But both doors refused to open. Maybe I could go up to the top floor and see what was going on from above, I thought. So, up to the top floor I went. But, the place was deserted as before. There was no sign of them.

I returned to the elevator and stood staring at the buttons inside, disappointed and at a loss. That kid was the only common thing among the last few places I'd been, and he might be my only lead as to what the hell was going on. Now, he'd disappeared. Again. And with my luck, Richard was putting a bullet through the kid's skull at that moment…and there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it. I slammed my fist into the wall in frustration, but all that got me was a sore hand. Time to move on.

My fingers reached the button for the bottom floor, but somehow they slipped sideways of their own volition (_I was tired_) and hit the button for the back door instead. To my surprise, the doors opened.

There was a hallway there, glowing green and concrete under the dim ceiling lights. I turned the first corner to the right and found myself face to face with my friend with the wool hat from earlier. I was beyond being frightened of ghosts by this point, so I just shoved past him and kept running around the corners before I realized that the hall was turning back on itself and I was probably going to end up at…

…_a dead end. __Great. Just great. I'm going to have to fight my way out of here._

Fortunately, Lady Luck came to my assistance (for once) with a heavy spade just sitting in a corner as if it were a perfectly normal thing to find in a hallway in the middle of a building. I picked it up and balanced it in my hands for a moment before giving it a test swing. Not bad…a little heavy for my taste, and hard to get moving, but that wide blade would smash through almost anything that it did connect with. Time to try out my new toy on my friend down the hall.

As I started forward to meet the ghost halfway, my toe hit something hard and wooden. It skittered heavily across the floor and hit a wall…and I knew from the sound what it was even before I bent over to pick it up. It was another of those anti-ghost swords, and it went straight into my belt. As I beat the tar out of the guy with the hat, I wondered if I should use it on him or hold onto it.

_Wouldn't be a bad idea to take him out, too,_ _but what if I run into more trouble later on? What if they gang up on me like they did in the subway? One alone isn't so bad…but two or three is more party than I want to take. I'll hold it for now in case I need to do some thinning of the herd._

* * *

Back in the elevator, I closed the doors, pushed the bottom button, and rested for a moment as the elevator dropped downward. That damn spade was heavy, and a lot harder to swing. Might be best to use the bat instead…but I'd hold onto the spade and drop it off at the next Hole I came to, just in case. Pack rats 'r' us.

The ladder on the bottom floor beckoned again, but I opened the opposite door to see what was there. It was just a little courtyard with a box of bullets in a corner on the ground, and otherwise empty. What caught my attention was the chain-link fence at one end and the dogs and apes prowling on the other side. With my luck, they were waiting for me. I could watch them from here, but they couldn't get to me… so, it might not be a bad idea to take them out now while I had the chance.

_Could I get to them? Not with the bat or the spade or the stun gun…but…_

By this time, I had enough bullets sitting in my chest at home that I could afford to use a few. I pulled the gun from my belt, checked to make sure it was loaded (of course it was), and pointed at one of the dogs that had caught my scent and was now banging on the fence, roaring at me and drooling on my boots. Pointed right between its eyes and pulled the trigger.

_BANG!_

See, that's the fun thing about hellhounds. Even a bullet between the eyes only just gets their attention. It jumped back and growled at me, so I fired again. And again. After five shots, the dog screamed and lay still. I had the luxury of being able to shoot from a safe location, so I didn't feel too bad about using up the bullets in the gun and the supply in my pockets. I could take my time and not waste any. I took out the other two in the same way, and left a few in the gun just in case. Then, back into the elevator and down the ladder.

Drains and shower heads. This was a shower room. The floors were concrete, still, but the walls were covered in dingy tile, and there was a dampness in the air that reminded me of the prison. There was a ladder on the other side that took me into the other elevator, but the elevator hadn't come back down yet. So, I hacked through the white mushrooms that filled the little hallway past the shower room and went up the ladder at the other end.

As soon as I was up there, I knew what I was going to find. I was in another long corridor. Let's see…I'd gone down a ladder to the shower room, and come up another ladder to here. So, I was on the same level as the outside area with the dogs and apes, on the other side of that fence. I'd shot all of the dogs, so…hmm…let's guess…apes? Yes, we have a winner, ladies and gentlemen. Apes. Or, one of them, anyway. This situation called for stealth and Stun, which was what I gave it. Damn thing swiped at me and grabbed my bat off of my belt, but once it was dead I just tucked the bat back in and kept going. A second ape waited just before the area I'd seen earlier, and it put up a better but ultimately futile fight.

By now, this area looked less like a walkway and more like a killing floor…which is what it had become. There was so much blood on the ground that I was leaving red footprints all up and down the corridor as I explored, and I barely noticed when I nearly stumbled over one of the dead dogs. They were really starting to pile up out here, and their sprayed blood – and mine, too – was soaking through my shirt and jeans to my skin.

Yeah, Dad would be really proud. And so would I...

This was an odd place for a Chinese restaurant. There were a few along this corridor, and a couple of vacant shop fronts. Lousy place to do business, though. What's the key to real estate? Location, location, location, right? Well, in this world, these places must have been damn good, because they obviously operated on word of mouth alone. Nobody would ever come up here just to wander around. All of them were closed, of course. I wasn't hungry, anyway. So I kept going.

Another open area. Another door on the other side. And four more goddamn apes between me and whatever lay beyond that door. The corridor I'd just walked through came in handy here, since the apes weren't very smart. If they couldn't see me, they wouldn't come after me. So, all I had to do was smile my best smile and wave and lure one over toward the corridor, away from its friends, where it and I could have a nice intimate little _tete-a-tete_ which involved the stun gun and always ended in a stomp. Every time. Hey. Guess I'm a cheap date, but I don't make promises I won't keep. I pride myself on being disgustingly reliable in that way.

After several minutes, I'd produced a nice pile of dead undead apes in the corridor. The last one, though, stubbornly stuck by that door, crouching between an old beat-up vending machine (those chips in there have got to be _stale_ by now) and a pile of boxes. Somewhere along the line, it had found itself a golf club, and was swinging it at me, which made the stun gun useless. Instead, I hauled out the spade, gritted my teeth and jabbed at its gut as hard as I could. The first hit annoyed it, and the second knocked it down. A downward thrust and a stomp, and I was the proud new owner of another golf club. Yay.

After I finished playing through, I took a moment to look around. By the door, the area bordered a large, open gap between the buildings, and as I looked up and down at the floors and floors of identical bright windows and pipes, I felt just a touch of vertigo. They went up and down as far as the eye could see, fading into blackness at both ends. It was like some mad architect's personal urban hell. I pulled my map from my pocket for the umpteenth time and looked at the mazes of corridors and rooms and stairs and elevators that led around and around in no coherent fashion. God help me if I ever had to backtrack through any of this.

The door led to a little set of stairs and down to a large room with a fan in its ceiling. It looked almost like a dance floor in a club, but without lights or a bar or anything remotely related to dancing there. Just a door that led to another metal staircase with a few slugs in the middle and some trash piled at the bottom. Same old same old.

At least the bar at the bottom of the stairs was of some interest. I remembered this place from back when I first moved into my apartment across the street. This was the Southfield, a floor up above the Fuseli. It's a weird place to have a bar, I know, but it actually worked out pretty well. People could come to the Fuseli for a terrific Italian dinner (man, they did the best rotini in town), and then head up the stairs for drinks and a game of pool. It wasn't a bad way to spend an evening. I'd made the trip solo the night I moved in, actually. I needed a break after a long day of moving, so I went looking for a decent microbrew and probably hoping a little that I might make a few friends on this side of town. Well, the beer had been good.

The place was quiet now, but, apart from the lack of people, it looked almost as it had that night two years ago. The pool table still stood by the cigarette machine in the corner, and the bar was fully stocked with liquors and that damn good beer that they always carried. The slugs on the walls were new, of course, as was the Hole that gaped at the other end of the pool table…and the old, beat-up axe that rested on the middle of the small round table by the bar was a very new addition. I picked it up and immediately felt at home with it, despite the blood and rust on the blade that I hadn't put there.

_Hmmm…it's short. But fast. Lightweight, too. Got a solid, if rusty, blade. It's easy to swing, it moves well, and I can operate it with one hand. That's a definite plus._

I took a few test swings at the slugs. They flew off of the wall onto the floor, just like they had before. After all that damn trouble with the apes upstairs, I figured that I had earned a little fun. So, swipe and squash time! I even got a few to bounce off of the little vinyl bench by the bar and out into the middle of the floor. Gotta take your breaks as they come, you know. Of all of the things I had to kill that day, those were by far the best. And they kept coming back, too. Hours of fun, kiddies. The axe handled beautifully, too.

The door at the other side, the one that usually led out to a balcony, was locked with a keypad. That was new. Fortunately, somebody had left me a little hint on the bar.

_The boss said that the number this time is the last 4 digits of this place's phone number.  
But the phone number is written right there on the sign on the roof.  
Anybody could see it from South Ashfield Street.  
Is that really okay?_

_No worse than leaving this note sitting out in the open where anybody can read it_, I thought. I knew just where he was talking about. There was a huge ugly billboard on top of the building across the street, next to the hotel, with an ad for the Southfield. It had the phone number of the place written right across in enormous white letters (but no address – go figure), and of course I couldn't remember what that number was. Hole time.

* * *

Dumping off the bat and spade (and the 5-iron) lightened my load considerably. I peered out the window at the billboard.

_555-3750_

Got it.

As I stood there, reloading my pistol, I saw movement by the windows out of the corner of my eye. I froze, but there was nothing in the room…nothing outside, either, if you didn't count the goddamn _ghostly head_ casually rising up just outside my window. It was gray and ended at the neck, and floated from bottom to top like a helium balloon, but upside down, neck-stump pointing skyward. I couldn't make out the face, but it was an older, balding man…looked kind of like Andrew, but not exactly like him. I half expected a matching disembodied hand to come along and wave hello. Probably would have waved back, too. It was all very surreal.

But I'd left surreal behind a long time ago.

* * *

See, now _this_ three-by-four keypad was laid out in the right way. Leave it to those cult nuts to even screw up a goddamn _keypad._ That's what I was thinking as I entered the numbers. Can you tell that I was more than a little punchy by now? If I hadn't been in such a hurry to get going, I might have poured myself a drink and had a nice (solo) game of pool. Oh well. Some other time, maybe.

The door opened not onto a balcony, but onto a large square stairwell. The walls were red brick, and the stairs spiraled up and down the sides of the space, which extended up and down as far as I could see. Well, at least they used to…the steps just below the door were gone, fallen through for several feet down. So, up was the only option.

As I started forward along the metal walkway, a scream echoed down from far above. It sounded like a man's scream, and I remembered the yelling and shrieking that had greeted me when I first arrived here…both human and animal.

_Richard? Shit!_

These stairs were going to take a while… I needed to get up them as quickly as possible, but I would have to pace myself to make it all the way up without stopping.

After a few seconds, the ghost with the hat from earlier showed up to keep me company as I jogged along. The problem was, it was able to just float up the middle of the stairwell, and I wasn't able to outrun it. My head was starting to pound again, harder than usual. Damn thing wouldn't come within range, either, so I couldn't beat it down to stop it for a little bit. So, there was nothing to do but sprint for all that I was worth and try to get up to the top – wherever that was – before this thing did me in.

I was soaked in sweat by the time I could see the ceiling. One more flight, and I was running along toward the end of the walkway (_hallelujah!_) and an ordinary-looking door. Of course, between me and that door to wherever was my friend with the hat. Persistent bastard…and he got in a couple of good swipes that almost knocked me off of the walkway into oblivion. But the axe proved to be everything I'd hoped it would be, and I laid him out for just long enough to get past him and tug on the doorknob.

Locked. Plaque. Blue, with abstract lines and circles. Falls into my hands.

_Chaos_.

_Richard!_

The lock clicked, and the door opened, and as I yanked it open I saw the number _207_ on the outside, on a little white plaque, just like it would be on his door.

Richard. In a chair in his front room, the one I could see from my window. I'd seen him in that same chair so many times, watching TV and laughing, or reading something, or yelling through the window at the kids next door. But I had never seen him sitting facing away from the windows, with metal bands binding his wrists to the chair, leaning back and spasming and screaming as smoke rose from his head and the smell of charring flesh filled the room. No…no, that was new.

I looked for a plug to pull, but there was none. He was being electrocuted in his own chair…without any electricity at all. I tried to rip the cuffs from his wrists, but all that did was add the smell of my own burning skin to that of his. His eyes were cloudy and rolling back in his head, and the woman on his ugly, ugly tie vibrated and shook in time with his uncontrolled jerks. His forehead was bleeding, and I knew what the cuts in his flesh would tell me before I'd finished reading them.

_**19121**__…he's Chaos…_

The little boy stood by the window, looking out, as if nothing at all was going on. As if the man who'd shoved a revolver into his face half an hour before wasn't dying a slow, horrible death not three feet away. As I watched, he raised his hand slowly and pointed upwards, out of the window, at something that I couldn't see…then he vanished into thin air.

Richard was trying to tell something. I could barely make it out.

"Th…that's n…n…no kid…"

_Not an ordinary one, anyway, that's for sure. But what do you mean…no kid?_

"It's th…the…one…one…one…two…one…m…m…man…"

_What the hell?_

I stood there, tongue-tied, watching him sizzle and smoke. That's exactly what it was like. Gruesome, yeah, but there are no excuses for that. I thought of those old-time experiments where they hooked up wires to frog's legs and made them twitch…

And then Richard's head slumped forward, and he stopped moving, and that I _did_ feel.

* * *

_Chaos._ Just as expected. There were four plaques in my chest now, sitting in a neat multicolored stack well away from harm. Every time I met somebody beyond the Hole, he or she died, and I got a nice little plaque for my chest…

I was more than a little crazy by now. Like I said, I'd started doubting my own eyes. I knew that some of what I was seeing was real. The pain from the burn on my hand lasted long enough to remind me of that before it healed up just like everything else did. Richard was dead. That was for sure. The radio told me so, before it cut out. I flipped it back on immediately, but all there was was a news report about some idiot getting himself arrested for peeing off of a flagpole in South Ashfield. Seriously. Whatever. A lesser sort of nut, I guess…as long as you're not at the bottom of that flagpole.

_So…if you die in your dream…_

He wasn't on his bed any more. Instead, there was a guy standing in Richard's front room, right where that little boy had stood, pointing just like he had. The man was youngish, I thought, but I couldn't be sure from this distance, and he had long yellow hair and a heavy dark coat. Now, I could see that he was pointing up toward my floor, but off to the left, toward the apartment next to me. Eileen's apartment.

Suddenly, I was very afraid. I scrambled over to the hole in the wall and nearly tripped over my own feet crouching down to look through. Fortunately, Eileen seemed hale and hearty. She'd changed into a short, tight purple dress with a little silver belt, and was buckling the strap on a pair of matching shoes. Looked like she was going out. Come to think of it, she had mentioned a party in the hallway earlier…_that must be why she's dressed up. Good._

_Get out of here as fast as you can, Eileen. Before it swallows you too…_

I could still smell Richard's burning flesh. That's a smell you never forget, like the smell of that prison. It was different from the smell of Jasper burning alive. I can still smell it now. The sweat was still drying on my skin, and I shivered as it chilled me.


	12. South Ashfield Heights 1

Darkness was starting to fall over Ashfield. I knew that this probably had little to do with anything just then, but it seemed very symbolic. Lights were coming on in the other apartments in the building, the ones that I could see, anyway. Fuseli's seemed to be opening for dinner, and the lights were on in the Southfield as well. That's about it for the nightlife around South Ashfield Heights, so everything seemed normal out there for that time of day. The neon signs were just the same, but the buildings looked right again.

The tall blond man was still in Richard's room, and still pointing like a statue. The kids in 206 were bouncing up and down on their bunks, some in pajamas, some still in T-shirts and jeans. The nurse in 106 was eating a TV dinner and watching the news. The guy in 107 was _still_ dancing around to whatever was on his turntable.

_All of them…any of them…any of them could be sucked into that world at any time. And if they are, if they end up going through that rabbit hole, they're dead for sure. I've seen it happen too many times to…_

…_wait. Will they?_

I thought back to the old book that I'd found in the orphanage. Source, Temptation, Watchfulness, Chaos. There had been only four. Four Atonements. Did that mean that after Richard, there would be no more? No more deaths? No more plaques? God, I hoped so. But there were Ten Sinners listed too. And Darkness, and Void, and Gloom, and Despair, and even a Giver of Wisdom. Were all of these people too? Or just symbols?

No clue. No goddamn clue. But whatever it was, it was sounding more and more like it had something to do with Walter Sullivan. At least, that's what the police on my radio were telling me, just like after Cynthia died. I got the feeling that things were starting to come together, that my ignorance wasn't going to last much longer.

On that point, anyway. When I went back into the bathroom, the Hole was bigger and rounder, as it had been every time somebody died. Red markings were appearing around the edges…red markings like those around the Holes in the other worlds. That, I still didn't understand, but there was something about it that bothered me on a low level.

Just as I was about to crawl in, I spotted something in the bottom of the toilet bowl. Something alien, obviously. Whatever it was, it was wedged in there firmly, and I couldn't tell you anything about it apart from that it was dark and square. Of course, I had bigger problems on my hands then than a blocked toilet. I hadn't eaten for some time, so I didn't need to use it (bet you really needed to know that, right?)…and given that I didn't have anything handy that I could use to fish the thing out, I didn't think it was worth getting anything _else_ on my hands that I might not be able to clean off. So I left it alone.

* * *

Face down again. 

There was a breeze in front of my face. I was lying down on something porous…then I felt the cold, rough, wet chain-link under my cheek and that told me the rest. The rust smelled sharp, mixed with the iron-scent of fresh blood. There was an odd feeling of familiarity, though, of comfort, as if I was somewhere that I knew well. As I pulled myself up, I only saw red, red everywhere, and it hurt my eyes after all those hours of gray on gray. This was all red, covered in blood, the walls and ceiling and all the way down the…_hallway._

_The hallway. __**This**__ hallway._

_**My**__ hallway._

For once, I knew exactly where I was when I woke up. It didn't matter that huge chunks of the carpet were missing, leaving only chain-link floors and bare support beams, or that the walls were covered in red, dripping blood that looked as though it had been sprayed around by an elephant with a nosebleed. The hallway and the doors and the whole area…I knew it all as well as I knew my own apartment. Because this **was** my own apartment. Or, actually, the hallway outside my own apartment...but not as I'd ever seen it before.

I was standing just outside the door to 301, the apartment down the hall from mine. The guy who lived there kept to himself (even more than the rest of us did); his main hobby appeared to involve large piles of raunchy porn magazines and a lot of alone time. Dead hellhounds littered the floor. Down the hall I could see my own door, with a patch of unmolested flooring and white wall around it, and past that was Eileen's door.

Knocking on that door was the guy I'd just seen in Richard's apartment. His yellow hair glowed oddly bright in the dim light of the hallway.

_Knock. Knock. Knock._

The sounds were measured and patient. After a second, he turned and walked away from me, down the hall, and around the corner to the stairs. I stood rooted to the spot, lips flapping and muttering to myself. The sound didn't echo in the way that I was used to. Between the wet walls and the chain-link floors, that wasn't going to happen anyway. But I just stood there like an idiot. I couldn't get past what had happened to my building...guess it was literally hitting me too close to home this time.

…_so it's here too. Right outside my room. Or…maybe this isn't really South Ashfield Heights. Like the subway wasn't really the subway, or the hotel and the Southfield weren't really…_

…_wonder if the blond guy killed the hellhounds. Maybe he's trying to get out of here, too…_

Then, I remembered. I could do it now. _I can warn people! Warn them to get the hell out of here!_ I had to get going.

Damned if the door to 301 didn't open at the lightest touch. The room was empty, empty of people, anyway, and covered in dirt and grime. The walls were different, too…red and dirty and devoid of that butt-ugly wallpaper that I'd seen in a few of the apartments. What was the name of the guy who lived here here? Mike? I couldn't remember for sure. Anyway, the place was full of piles of magazines of dubious educational value. Stacks and stacks of them. There weren't just the usual "men's magazines" and the stuff that lived in brown wrappers behind the counter at the convenience store on the corner. I saw foreign-language magazines, too, with people of all sizes and shapes on the covers doing things that I didn't know were physically possible. Not that I'd ever spent much time reading that stuff, but seeing Mike's collection made me swear off of it for life. Before you ask, no, I didn't go looking through them. No time for that sort of thing, even if I had been so inclined. And I wasn't.

I was much more interested in the small, thin blank book that lay open on the single table in the front room. Its handwritten pages were soaked with blood. Most of it was illegible, of course, but two diary entries were left, telling me of this guy's love for somebody named Rachael, and talking about the guy next door…named Joseph…who had been working really hard…he was a journalist…and had been in his room for a while…and there were these weird noises, too.

I could hear the pieces smoothly sliding together and joining in my head with a _click_, like before. Joseph must have been the previous tenant in 302, the one who moved out months before I moved in. And, Frank hadn't been the only one to hear those strange noises…just like the ones he was hearing now from the same room. This wasn't the first time that this had happened.

_Not the first time._

Mike wrote that he had lost his favorite clothes as well, but that didn't seem important just then. There was a red note there, too, but it was blank. I took it anyway, and so I was done here.

In his back room was another table, with a large magazine open to an article about…well, what do you know. Wish House. I scanned it quickly.

_Orphanage, check…Silent Hill Smile Support Society, check…children crying, check…round concrete tower, check…prison, check…cult nuts, check…_

There was little there that I hadn't either guessed at or learned through first-hand experience in the last few hours. The article was by a Joseph Schreiber. Maybe the same Joseph. That name showing up twice was just a little too much of a coincidence. He'd been to those places, too, or at least he'd seen them. Just like I had. He'd stayed in his room for days…just like I had. And he…well, I'd _assumed_ that he'd moved out, but nobody had ever actually told me anything about him. Not that I'd asked. Now that I thought about it, it was weird that he'd left a lot of his stuff behind in 302. As if he'd just up and left…or…

_What happened to him, anyway?_

There were two pictures in the room, too, large red and black photographs taped roughly to the walls. One of them was of a pretty, petite nurse by a window, staring wide-eyed at the camera as if taken by surprise. Scrawled across the picture in black marker was _I love you_.

_Rachael?_ Her face looked rather familiar, but I couldn't place her.

As I peered at the photograph in the semi-darkness of the room, the light shining from the hallway glinted off of a bump in its surface. Something seemed to be stuck behind the photo. I unstuck the lower corner and slid my hand behind the picture, over the blood that somehow wasn't soaking into the heavy paper. Something hard and pointy and metal was fastened to the wall with tape, but a good tug pulled it loose, and it fell to the floor. It was a key to one of the mailboxes downstairs, just like the one on my keyring, but judging from the "106" on the head of the key, it wasn't Mike's. I had no plans to go through my neighbors' mail, not unless I ran out of other options, but I pocketed it just in case, since keys were proving very useful today.

The other photo was of two people standing outdoors, arms around each other, on a clear, sunny day. Behind them stretched hills and water, a lot like the area around Toluca Lake. The face of one of the people was scratched out with that same black marker, but I knew the old white sweater on the other even before I saw his face. It was Frank, of course. On vacation (_that never happens…_), years ago, from the looks of things. Somehow, I'd never imagined him taking a vacation...but whatever. Wherever he was, he probably hadn't gone to the Silent Hill end of the lake, for the obvious reasons. Could be wrong, though. Who knows how long he'd owned that sweater. For all I knew, it was older than I was. Anyway, there was another lump behind the picture, and this time it was a heavy metal door key, just like mine, with "105" written on it.

_Frank's key. The key to the super's room. This could be very useful._

But I knew that something was wrong the moment I stepped back out into the hallway. Guess the peace and quiet couldn't last forever. The old-woman ghost was hovering in the kitchen, nosing around the cabinets and drawers as if in search of a snack. I didn't know that ghosts got the munchies. Bet you didn't, either, Saturday morning cartoons notwithstanding. Anyway, as soon as she caught sight of me, her hunt for chips and salsa ended, and I just managed to get past her and throw myself headlong into the Hole that gaped in the middle of the wall where Mike's windows should have been.

* * *

There was a screeching noise, and then a familiar rumble coming from nearby. I couldn't place it for a few seconds, but as I listened I recognized the low-pitched lumpy thrum of my dryer. I'd done a lot of things today, but one thing I _hadn't_ done was the load of socks and undershirts and boxers that had been waiting in the laundry basket, so I knew that something was up. 

What was up was that I would have to be very careful from now on not to mess myself in terror, because I now had no clean boxers. Or socks, or undershirts, either. The basket was empty and the dryer was running, and when I opened the dryer door, blood sprayed all over the wall and floor. As I stood there, watching the blood drip down the wall, the machine ejected a single sock. It hit the floor with a damp _squish_ and stuck fast, red and soaking wet. For what it's worth, that was the first time I'd ever let myself get down to one set of clean things. Leave it to Murphy's law to bring the end of the world when I'm out of underwear. (As if there's a _good_ time, right?) Like I said, that was the first time I'd let my dirty laundry pile up, and you can be damn sure that it will be the last.

There was a red note under my door again. This one took a good while to digest.

_I figured out the riddle behind the numbers._  
"_01121" is actually "01/21".  
In other words, 1 out of 21.  
So Walter was planning on killing 21 people…?  
But he never finished the job.  
He was convicted for the murders of Billy and Miriam Locane, the 7__th__ and 8__th__ victims.  
Afterwards, he committed suicide in his jail cell.  
The grisly mass murder of 10 people shocked the world  
and came to be known as the "Walter Sullivan Case".  
There are two big puzzles here.  
The first is: What was the motive for the murders?  
The second is: Why did he kill himself before completing his task?  
Was he simply insane…?_

_May 2_

Twenty-one people. That's a lot to kill. What took so long to digest wasn't the other information, which I vaguely remembered from ten years ago when you couldn't open a newspaper without seeing more details of who he'd killed. What took so long was recovering from the shock I got when I read the meaning of the numbers.

_He was counting them off. 01/21. 02/21. 03/21. Onward to 10/21, if he'd killed ten people, right? So…then forward to 16/21 -- Cynthia. 17/21 – Jasper. 18/21 – Andrew, 19/21 – Richard. Four more killed by …somebody. Couldn't be Walter, because he was dead._

_One more. I almost forgot. 11/21. On the coffin in the graveyard by the Wish House. That coffin was old. Must be the same copycat. What happened to numbers 12 through 15, though? Did the copycat just skip those for whatever reason? Or...had the police kept those victims secret? Not released information about the link to the Sullivan murders? Why would they have done that? Maybe they were trying to discourage more copycats. Who knows._

As I stood there, leaning against the door with the note in my hand, my eye caught a faint flicker in the peephole. Somebody – or something – was out there. I couldn't see anybody when I looked, just another red handprint added to the collection…there were nineteen now. Still, maybe whoever it was had wandered past and might come back any minute. I peered around the hallway outside to see if I could see anything wrong with it, whether that blood-soaked hallway through the hole was really out there…

Then he did, and I wished that I hadn't kept looking. I was face to face with the blond man from 207, the one who had knocked on Eileen's door just now. He was standing right in front of the hole, blocking out almost everything around him. All that I could see was his face with its smug, unearthly grin and a pair of heavy-lidded light greenish-yellow eyes staring right through the hole at me. He knew that I was there, as surely as if he could see me. For several seconds, we stared at each other, our faces only inches apart…then he lifted his head (he had to stoop a little to look through the peephole, same as I do), turned on his heel, and walked away down the hall toward the stairs.

…_what was __**that**__ all about? That look was definitely an "I know something you don't know" look…_

_Oh shit._

Back to the hole in the wall. At first, I couldn't see Eileen, and it was a long, long several seconds before she wandered back into my field of view, meandering around as if killing time. At least she was OK for now. I didn't know why she wouldn't be, of course. But it made me feel a little better.

_Time to go back through the Hole and try to find some more answers, I guess_. Just before I climbed in, I went back to the chest and grabbed the sword out of it.

* * *

As soon as I got back, I took a few minutes to beat down the old-lady ghost that was back to nosing around the kitchen in 301. I don't know what it says about my state of mind at that point that I didn't think twice about laying into an elderly woman with an axe, but given what she was trying to do to me, I pretty much had to. Fortunately, she hit the floor after some work, and I pulled the sword from my belt and lifted it high up…and she was back up, clawing at my legs. She wasn't about to stay down, not yet. This was going to be harder than it looked. 

But didn't the note say something about having to weaken them first? Time for more beatdown. After a minute or so, she slumped again, and as I took hold of the sword again I could feel it thrumming in my grip. Strike while it's energized, right? This time, it worked, and I planted it in her back before she could get up again. Now, she was pinned to the floor just like the guy at the birthday party had been, flailing and burbling and no longer a problem. Those swords were life-savers in every way.

The little kid from the forest was standing outside my door, on the clean section of flooring, pounding his fist against it as hard as he could.

"Mom!" he yelled. "Mom!"

_Dammit, kid, you're wasting your time. Your Mom isn't in there. Nobody is right now. And anyway, that door's not going to open no matter how hard you bang on it. Trust me. I've tried._

But just as I stepped forward to catch his attention, he disappeared into thin air, just as he had in Richard's apartment, and I was left alone in the hallway, staring at my door.

The door to 303 was locked, of course. I pounded on it for all I was worth, but there was no response. I hoped that Eileen wasn't stuck in her room just like I had been. Or maybe she'd gotten out already. Maybe Frank or Eileen or somebody had raised the alarm, after what happened to Richard, and people had gotten out…no, wait, I'd seen them through my windows just a few minutes before. That couldn't be it.

"Eileen! It's Henry! Get out if you can!" I yelled through the door. "Get the hell out of here!" She probably wasn't there – not in _this_ Room 303 – but I had to try.

Then I remembered how empty all of the other places had been…and how the only people I did meet there ended up dying. Everybody who I'd talked to or helped out or encountered in any way ended up dead. Everybody but the little boy and the tall blond man. Then again, I hadn't really talked to the man before, just seen him around the apartments.

_Was he going to be the next to die?_

I was getting superstitious now, like a kid who won't step on cracks in the sidewalk. Maybe he wouldn't be the next if I didn't talk to him…yeah, maybe that was it. Maybe if I didn't say anything, tried to avoid him as much as I could…maybe that would help. Help keep him alive. Maybe. I'd talked to Cynthia a few times, a little bit to Jasper after we'd gotten into Wish House, to Andrew in his cell and by the ladder, and to Richard on the roof of the hotel…maybe that was why they'd died. That was the only thing they had in common, speaking to me. I wasn't the one carving them up and lighting them on fire, but maybe it was really my fault that they were dying. It was one thing to take out an ape that was trying to rip my throat out, or squash an evil stinging slug, but these people hadn't done anything to me. Nothing at all.

Well, I wouldn't make that mistake again. I was going to do what I could to keep this guy alive. I could at least do that. So I decided that I'd avoid talking to anybody. My neighbors would be safer if I stayed out of their way and didn't warn them about what was going on. After all, if they could hear my voice, it was too late for them to get out anyway, right? If they were here, they'd already been sucked in. And if the big blond guy didn't cross my path, maybe he could stay alive too. Somehow, I felt that if I allowed him to die like I had the others (I know, I know…), now that I'd figured out something that I could do that might keep him alive, his death would be ten times worse than any of the others had been. I **had** to keep this man alive.

I thought that _I_ was the angel of death here. Wrong again, as it turned out, but I didn't know that at that time.

Anyway, as soon as I went through the doors to the stairwell, I knew that the avoidance part was going to be a hell of a challenge. There he was, sitting on the steps, with his elbows on his knees and his heavy dark blue coat billowing out around him. His head was bowed, and there was something in his hands that he was handling gently. There was no way that I could get around him without him seeing me.

The stairwell was in the same shape as the hall had been. As I looked around, I saw a strange cylindrical metal cage hanging from the stairwell ceiling, empty. The stairs were awash in blood. I'd have to be careful to avoid slipping on them.

I tried to creep quietly past the man, hoping that he was too preoccupied with what he was doing to notice me. Just as I thought I might have managed it, a voice came from behind me.

"I got this from Miss Galvin…a long, long time ago."

His voice was soft, higher-pitched than I would have expected, and he spoke slowly as if half asleep. But he had my attention as soon as he said the name. Was he talking about Eileen?

"She was younger than me back then…"

_Huh? _

He gently turned the object in his hands. I could see now that it was a fabric doll with a wide white face and a blue dress, and long dark yarn hair. It looked old, and it was obviously well-loved; its dress was worn and threadbare, and the embroidery on its face was fraying. It was clean, though, and the white trim on its skirt was still white. It was nearly swallowed up in his hands, which were bigger than mine (and that's saying something…I have these really big hands). He stared at it with a distant look, then shook his head.

"She looked so happy…holding her mother's hand..."

He looked straight ahead at the wall, as if lost in memory, then turned to me.

"Here."

He held the doll up for me to see, beamed at me like a little kid, and laid it down on the step next to him.

"I'll give it to you."

My initial thought was to refuse. I was pretty weirded out by the guy, who sounded like the sort of guy who shouldn't be allowed anywhere near kids. He carried a little girl's _doll_ around with him, for chrissake. I didn't want to have anything to do with him, and not just because I was afraid that he was going to die and it would be my fault if he did.

_No way. This is too strange._

Then, I looked into his face. He was still smiling at me with that little-kid smile of his, as if sharing his doll with me was the most wonderful thing in the whole wide world. Maybe for him, it was. I couldn't help but smile back a little. We stayed like that for a second or two, and then he dropped his head and went back to contemplating his hands. The huge rounded fingers twined together as he watched them move.

_This guy's like a little kid himself._

Suddenly, I had this irrational need to be kind to him. Something was very off about this guy, yeah, but he seemed harmless. He even seemed to want to be my friend. He might be useful later on, if he knew something about what was going on (and I suspected that he did). At least, I wouldn't be completely alone in here any more. Plus, if I said no, he might not take it very well. Kid-like or not, he had a few inches and more than a few pounds on me, and those hands could probably crush my neck without breaking a sweat. No reason to piss him off unnecessarily, right?

So I picked up the old doll (it had a sweet scent, like incense) and hooked it through my belt. He was still twisting his fingers together, playing church-and-steeple, and didn't look up as I started down the stairs again. After a few steps, I automatically turned around to thank him, but caught myself just in time. He was still sitting there, lost in his own little world.

Only then did I notice the spots of bright red blood on his coat.


	13. South Ashfield Heights 2

The whole stairwell was enclosed in rusty chain-link. There was a Hole in the apartment foyer now, right by the wall by Frank's room, along with four more dead dogs and plenty of blood. The front double doors weren't going to open any time soon, of course. There was nothing new on the bulletin board except for the sprayed stinking blood, either. Same old same old.

Well, I had two keys now, and first up was the key to Frank's room. The sign outside 105 still read "Superintendent's Room", and so I turned the key in the lock and hoped to God that Frank wasn't there.

He wasn't, of course. The place was somewhat familiar to me, and hadn't changed much since I'd moved in over two years ago, when I'd come by to pick up the key to my room and drop off my deposit check and get the usual "no smoking, no pets, no wild parties" lecture that I'm sure he gives everybody. The bank of security monitors was still on top of the table by his kitchen, but the kitchen itself was fenced off with rusty iron bars. Everything was covered with sprayed blood. There was a horrible stench coming from somewhere in the room, horrible even for this place, but I ignored it when my eye caught the huge keyring hanging next to the table. He obviously didn't need it here, or now, so…I could always return it later, right?

There were also a couple of pieces of red paper sitting in a box by the keys. One had been torn and was only half a sheet, and the other was intact. They looked a lot like the diary pages that somebody was pushing under my door, but they were too red and bloody to read…like that envelope that Frank had shoved under my door.

_Just like the envelope. It looked fine through the peephole, but on my side it was soaked through with blood and nearly fell apart in my hands. Like these papers are now._

I stood there for a second or two, staring at the damp papers in my hand. Then, an idea came to me. _I wonder…_

I'd give it a shot when I had to go back upstairs. For now, I folded the papers carefully into my pocket and continued nosing around.

Old Frank lived a pretty quiet life, it seemed, just like the rest of us. There wasn't much going on but apartment business and TV. All of his furniture was old and worn, but seemed to be in good shape. There were file cabinets in the front room with rent applications and receipts, the usual stuff, you know. Business cards for plumbers and electricians and roofers sat in a small card box on a table.

Down the hallway, one of the rooms was blocked with iron bars. I peered through them into the darkness. In the faint light from the hall, I could see what looked like a bedroom, with a bed, a dresser, and a small cabinet and mirror. There was a chair, too, with an old woolen coat draped over the back, as if its owner had just dropped it off and stepped out. On the wall was a discolored patch where a large picture had once hung. The room looked as though it hadn't been used in years, and it struck me that it wasn't covered in blood and dirt, as the other rooms had been. Everything in there looked very normal, actually. Almost as if…as if it had been preserved. I took a deep breath and blew through the bars as hard as I could, and watched the dust rise up in clouds and dance through the shafts of light. No doubt about it…it had definitely been years since anyone had been in there. I couldn't get in now, and it wouldn't have felt right to disturb it, anyway.

Frank's bedroom was open. The long, narrow bed was pushed against one wall, and an ancient computer sat yellowing on a desk in a corner. A small lined book was open on the nightstand. Frank's writing sprawled spikily across the mottled paper.

_The red box seems even stranger today.  
It's giving off a terrible smell.  
It's disgusting, but I just can't throw it away.  
It must have been around 30 years ago. That young couple was living in the apartment,  
but one day they just suddenly disappeared.  
Ran off just like thieves in the night.  
I don't know why. It must have been money troubles,  
or maybe they got themselves into some kind of danger.  
The problem came after that.  
They left their newborn baby when they took off. I even found the umbilical cord.  
I called the ambulance right away and I heard the baby survived,  
but I don't know what happened to him.  
Although a few years later, I often saw a young kid hanging around the apartment.  
One day he just stopped coming by.  
But now that I think of it, I'll bet he was that abandoned baby.  
It's a horrible story.  
Abandoning a newborn baby…  
That all happened in Room 302…  
And the umbilical cord I found there…  
Well, I still can't get myself to throw it away._

I was sitting on Frank's bed, reading this and trying to keep my head from exploding. You can imagine what I was thinking. This was a story that I'd never heard before, never. I never had any idea that anything so…terrible had happened in my apartment. It was a long time ago, well before I was born, but the horror of it echoed down the years to me, and I wondered why the stench of blood seemed so much stronger in here for a few moments before I realized that my mouth was hanging open. What kind of people would do that to a kid, anyway? What had it done to him, growing up knowing that his parents had abandoned him in a deserted apartment? Frank was right…it probably was him there, in the hallway, years later. The little kid trying to find his parents…

…_his mother. Trying to find his mother in my apartment, where he had been born. _

"_Mom…mom…let me in…why doesn't u Wake up?"_

That was _impossible_. That little kid would have grown up a long, long time ago. There was _no way_ that he could be standing at my door, hammering at it, looking for his mom…unless...unless he was a ghost too. Why couldn't he be? He didn't look as …well, as _dead_ as the other ghosts, but maybe it was different if you were a kid when you died. I wouldn't know. Never really thought about it before. And it did explain the disappearing act.

But then…Andrew had called the kid "Walter Sullivan". If he'd died when he was a kid, there's no way he could have grown up to be a serial killer, too. So, were there two Walter Sullivans? It wasn't the rarest combination of names around, but it seemed unlikely. Again, it was too much of a coincidence.

_But still, it isn't possible._

That umbilical cord was in here, somewhere, too. The one that had started to stink, that Frank had told Eileen about outside my door. He said that he kept it in a box in his room…

_For once, I'm going to be led by the nose._

So I followed the unholy stench I'd noticed when I first entered the apartment, straight to the shelves in Frank's front room, where a square red wooden box rested on a counter. It was definitely the source of the godawful stink. Tears were rolling down my cheeks from the stinging fumes. There was no way that I was going to investigate this further unless I absolutely had to, and right now I didn't have to. I'd had enough, and so I headed out the door.

* * *

Back out in the refreshing air of the hallway (well, hardly _fresh_), I jangled the heavy keyring in my hand and thought about where I might want to go next. The way things had been going for me today, I'd probably end up looking in every room of the building eventually, but where should I start? 

With these keys, I could begin anywhere I wanted to…well, almost anywhere. The key for 303 seemed to be missing from Frank's keyring. All of them were clearly marked, and that one just wasn't there, no matter how many times I flipped through the stack of keys. The key to 302 was still present, but I'd already seen that it was useless. I thought for a moment, then I went out to the foyer and headed up the stairs. A few dogs lay between me and my destination, but they were cheap dates, too.

Richard's room was still covered in that ugly wallpaper, but it wasn't sprayed with blood. His chair still sat in the middle of the room as it had before, and there was a bloody trash can off in a corner with some ripped clothing in it. The furniture in the room was in disarray, pushed against the walls away from the chair as it had been when Richard died.

Standing by the window on the other side of the room was the man in the coat. He was looking out of that window again, just as I'd seen him doing before from my apartment. Of course, he vanished as soon as I got near him, just like the little boy had, and I was left alone in the room.

_Damn. I need to figure out what he's up to. That's going to be hard if he's going to disappear on me. I can't talk to him, either, ask him any questions…but I __**can**__ find out what he was really pointing at._

The outside of the apartment building was just as bloody and rusty as the inside. There was chain-link all up the walls and across the brick. It was nighttime out there. A single light was glowing up and to the right, and standing right by that light was…

You know who it was. Who else? Eileen. She was here.

_She's here. In this world. Which means that…_

Shit. Shitshitshitshitshit. It meant that…that she could die, too. _Two_ other people here. No, three, because the little kid was here. What did _that_ mean?

What it meant was that she was in danger, too, and I had absolutely no idea what I could do about it. But I had to do _something._

Something glinted darkly on the chair. I recognized it at once. It was Richard's old heavy revolver. The last time I'd seen it, it had been pointed at me; now, it was still pointed at me, but there was nobody to pull the trigger. I picked it up carefully and spun the chamber. There were six bullets inside. It wouldn't take the same type of ammo as the pistol, of course, so I couldn't reload it, but still those were six large bullets that I could put into _something_. Into my belt it went.

Eileen was still pacing back and forth, as if she was waiting for something. Had she tried to go to her party and found her door stuck, like mine? Or had she not even tried yet? I thought back quickly. It was getting dark back in the real world…she'd probably be leaving soon. And if she did…she probably didn't even know that anything was wrong. She'd be completely unprepared.

_Stay in your room, Eileen. Don't go out. Whatever you do, don't go out. I'm coming for you, even though you don't know it yet. Just don't go out. Stay right where you are. Wait for me..._

I finally found that putter I'd wanted back in the sports shop, leaning against Richard's night stand. It wasn't much use to me, though, not yet. Anything that wasn't directly helpful in getting me into Eileen's room wasn't any good to me just then. There was only one thing that was going to help – the key to 303 that was missing from Frank's keyring – and there was only one thing to do…look for it. So, back downstairs, through the Hole to drop things off, and then more exploring.

Downstairs ended up being mildly interesting and rewarding. No key to 303, of course, but some useful stuff in a few of the rooms, and more than I ever wanted to know about my neighbors along the way. A picture on a table in 106 told me that the woman I'd seen in the red photo in 301 was indeed the nurse who lived there, but that little soap opera wasn't of much interest to me. 107's record collection was pretty impressive, though. I wouldn't have guessed that he was a classic rock fan. I'd always figured him for a headbanger. Guess you never really can tell.

On the other side of the hallway, 104 was full of bird-bats, and 103 was completely empty. 102 was the cat lady's room, and it was full of…no, not cats. Not even hairballs or dirty litter or old cans of tuna, but there were plenty of slugs. They swarmed around the kitchen, and I got my boot good and wet and squishy before I could open the fridge to find out what the hell smelled so bad in there.

_Ugh. A dead cat. Wrapped in…torn jeans. Been there a while, too._

Something poked out of the jeans, and I reached in carefully and pulled out another piece of red paper. It was just as illegible as the others had been. That reminded me that I had to head upstairs to test out my little theory when I was done down here.

I was really looking forward to getting into 101. I didn't know the guy who lived there well (or at all, actually), but what I did know was that his sole purpose in life seemed to be collecting firearms. I'd heard him boasting about his dozens of handguns and shotguns and rifles and some illegal stuff as well, and God knew that I was going to be happy to take it all, down to the last bullet, if it was going to keep me alive. What with the convenient Hole just down the hall, I had happy visions in my head of lugging armfuls of heavy weapons and bullets back to my place and building up a nice big arsenal. I couldn't carry a lot of it with me at once, but there were enough Holes around so far to suggest that going back for more when I needed it wouldn't be too big a challenge.

Sure enough, in his front room was a wall covered with guns of all shapes and sizes. You name it, he had it. There were handguns and rifles and shotguns and automatic weaponry. There was even a chainsaw. They were resting on hooks mounted in the wall, like museum exhibits or trophies. Other weapons were scattered on tables or sitting on chairs. The whole place looked like a gun shop, and in my current frame of mind it was a beautiful, beautiful sight. I felt a stupid grin spread across my face.

A long shotgun lay on the kitchen counter, and I grabbed it greedily. It was smooth and…

…_wait a minute. It doesn't feel right. It's too light to be…_

_Oh __**crap.**_

I moved from gun to gun, picking up each one and weighing it in my hands, and my heart sank into my slug-gut-covered boots. Every single gun in the room had the exact same problem. The craftsmanship was beautiful, and the woods were smooth and fine…but that's all there was. Wood. They were all hand-carved _models_ of guns. Not a real one in the bunch. Not even the chainsaw. Why would somebody go to the trouble of carving a chainsaw, anyway?

So that's what I was faced with. A room full of model weapons. What kind of useless junk was this? There was nothing good in there unless you wanted to bludgeon somebody to death, and I had better ways of doing that, thanks. Nothing except a single box of pistol bullets on the counter by the wooden shotgun, taunting me. At least _those _were real. I mentally cursed out the lying bastard, pocketed the bullets, and slammed the door hard behind me as I left.

* * *

I made a brief trip through the Hole in the foyer to dump off things (but I kept the doll on me in case I ran into the blond guy again), and went up to the second floor. I'd already taken out the resistance outside of Richard's room, and the rest of the floor was blessedly quiet except for a single ghost that was too slow to cause me much trouble. 203 held an impressive collection of booze from around the world and a half-empty can of bug spray that I took along for reasons I couldn't articulate, as well as another piece of bloody paper stuffed inside a torn-up shirt in the back bedroom. 

I knew that a painter lived in 202. I'd seen him carrying large covered canvases up and down the stairs (even helped out a few times). One day, we had had a lengthy discussion by the mailboxes on the merits of our favorite subjects. He liked to paint portraits, and I prefer to photograph scenery, but we still found a lot to talk about, all the usual art school stuff. He'd even seen a couple of my pictures in brochures, and he said complimentary things about them. He seemed like a nice enough guy, and I enjoyed talking to him, but I'd never seen his work.

Now I got to see what was on those canvases. He'd done portraits of nearly everybody in the building, and labeled them with comments that were sometimes funny, and sometimes sad. I took a few minutes to look through them, and ended up learning a good deal about my neighbors one way or another. I liked his style of painting – he used thick outlines and bold colors, and he managed to capture some of the personality of his subjects as well. That's part of why I stick to buildings and landscapes…I never got the hang of making the people in my pictures seem like people and not just things.

It wasn't until much later that I realized that of all of the residents of South Ashfield Heights, only two portraits were missing…mine and Eileen's. It's not surprising that he hadn't painted me – hell, people barely ever saw me – but I'd have thought that he'd have asked Eileen to sit for him. No idea if it meant anything or not. There was a large canvas in the middle of the front room with drafting outlines on it, but I couldn't tell who it was…a bald-headed man in a chair, maybe? Nobody I'd ever seen before.

205 had a tape cassette labeled "Skinned Mike" on the table, and 206, where the family lived, had big bunks in the bedroom, a crib with a teddy bear in it in the front room, and two hellhounds that I figured should be left alone for the time being. Fighting in those small rooms was a challenge, and the dogs probably weren't going anywhere any time soon, so if I left them in there they'd be no problem.

No key, though. No key at all. So, time to go back upstairs. The steps were empty, of course. With a little luck, I wouldn't run into the blond guy again.

I heard the muffled thumps and yells as soon as I passed through the double doors on the third floor. They were coming from 303. What the hell was going on in there?

_Eileen! Hang on...I'll be there as soon as I can. Where __**is**__ that damn key, anyway?_

304 belonged to the quiet older couple who smiled at me in the hallway sometimes. Of course, there was nothing unusual in their apartment, and I felt a little bad having to look there in the first place. It was such a simple, serene place that spoke of the people who lived in it. We should all be so happy and content when we're their age, right? Intruding into that tidy little world with slimy boots and guns in my belt and a bloody axe in my hand was just _wrong_, and I got out as quickly as I could.

That was the last room, except for mine and Eileen's, and there was still no sign of the key to her room. And God only knew what was going on next door…I had to move quickly. But what was the next move?

_I'm done here for now. My pockets are nearly full, and all I have left is that theory of mine. _

I ran back down the hallway past the thumps and watched the little kid disappear again as I approached my door. I fished the pieces of red paper from my pockets and bent down in front of the door. My idea was that, if Frank's letter had been bloodied by passing from the hallway to my room, that maybe – just maybe – the bloody pieces of paper I put under the door from the hallway would somehow magically clean themselves when they hit my carpet inside. After all, all of my injuries and dirt and blood and slug guts mysteriously vanished every time I came back through the Hole, so maybe whatever was cleaning me would work on paper too. I had nothing to lose by trying, anyway. The pieces slid under the door smoothly, and when I stood up there were five little red corners poking out from underneath.

The old lady was still gurgling on the floor in 301 as I climbed into the Hole and cursed my sore knee.


	14. South Ashfield Heights 3

There were, indeed, five pieces of paper under my door. Red, but clean, just like the diary notes that showed up there every now and then. I pulled them out of the door crack, went over to my storage chest, sat down on it and started to read.

First, there was a mangled love letter from Mike to Rachael. The poor bastard was obsessed with her, and it sounded as if she barely knew that he existed. It was depressing, and rather creepy, but irrelevant. Next was a diary entry for May 14, which told me that there _had_ been a twelfth victim, carved up in the usual way…but it had happened years after Walter Sullivan died. Copycat victim, then. Something about it unnerved the writer, though. Two notes down, three to go.

The next one caught my attention right away.

_I picked up the key that Eileen from Room 303 must have dropped.  
I thought I'd return it but she wasn't home. I guess I'll give it to the super._

_May 20_

The key…not the key from the keyring, but Eileen's own key. There were two keys to 303 out there now. Two options. I hadn't found either one, though, so there might have been fifty for all the good it was doing me. The two torn pieces ended up fitting together, and read as follows. (Yes, I remember all of this in detail. You'll see why later.)

_I lost the key to Eileen Galvin's room.  
I've gotta find it and bring it back.  
Let me think…The last place I saw it was…  
Oh yeah, I had a really wicked headache that day and just collapsed on the bed.  
Maybe if I look near the bed in my room – 302's bedroom – I'll find it.  
I get headaches every day now.  
It's terrible.  
What am I going to do?_

_May 22_

So whoever was writing all of these notes had lived in my room before…was he Joseph, then? Joseph Schreiber, the reporter who had written that article about Wish House? That did explain a few things, a lot, actually…but that would have to wait until I found that key. I knew damn well it wasn't by my bed. I would have noticed, right?

Apparently not. For now there was a heavy metal key on the floor between my bed and the window, just lying there as if I hadn't been turning the entire building upside down for the past hour or so looking for it. Tied to it was a tiny replica of the doll that the blond man had given me, the one that he said Eileen had given to him, and on the grip was "303". No doubt that this was the right key.

_Let's just hope that it works, unlike the key for my door._

But where was she? I couldn't see her through the hole in the wall. Whatever was going on, she wasn't in her bedroom. At least…

* * *

Back in 301, I decided to take my chances against the old lady. I didn't know what I was going to find when I opened Eileen's door (truth be told, I didn't really want to think about it just then), and I was still thinking conservatively about the swords. She'd been surprisingly easy to beat down before, so I figured that I could do it again if I had to, and it would be better to save the sword for a bigger problem than her. So, I yanked it out and pulled the door open and ran like hell down the hallway before she could take a swipe at me. Was that the last time I ever saw her? I don't remember. It might have been. 

I made it to 303 in record time. The little fabric doll on the keychain was fighting me as I tried to wrestle it out of my pocket, twisting in the fabric and pushing the key into my leg, but I finally got the key out …and damn near dropped it when a sharp, shrill, agonized scream came through the door. My hands started shaking, and of _course_ it took forever to get the key into the lock, and of _course _then the goddamn lock was stuck. I've never sworn as loudly as I did then, I'm sure, but the key eventually turned in the lock and I threw the door open.

I don't know what police photographs were released to the papers, so I don't know what you've seen of what happened there. Her apartment was just like everybody else's, down to the butt-ugly wallpaper with a complex pattern of greens and yellows. There was furniture, a TV, plants, the usual stuff. I remember this now, you see, but at the time all I saw were the waist-high streaks of fresh blood that had sprayed onto the wallpaper and were running thickly down the walls, and the trail of bloodsoaked carpet just inside the door that led into the room, and then…

She was there, lying face down on the floor at the end of the trail of blood. It was still running out of her as she struggled to lift herself off of the carpet. Bruises and cuts covered her skin from head to toe. She looked as though she'd been beaten to a pulp. Her little dress had done nothing to protect her from whatever – or whoever – had done this. At her head stood little Walter, with a thoughtful look on his face and not a speck of blood on him. Just _standing_ there. He didn't look up as I entered the room, but kept his eyes fixed on Eileen as she raised her bloodied head to him. I have no idea if she'd heard the door open or if she even knew that I was there.

As she tried to pull herself up, I saw that there were numbers carved into her back. Do I need to tell you which ones?

"Hey, kid," she breathed. Her voice was weak, but soft. "Thanks."

A deep breath.

"Did you find your mommy?"

Walter said nothing.

"This place…it's dangerous…"

Something twisted inside me. _God…you would know, Eileen. You know now..._

"You need…" She choked for a moment. "Hurry and…get out of here…"

She was still for a second. Then, her head dropped, and her breath escaped her lungs with a sigh. She was…

I can't say it, not even now. Even after what happened later. _Especially_ after what happened later.

Walter looked up at me. There was sadness in his eyes, that was certain, but they gave nothing away. Why had she thanked him? What had he done? This was the first time that he'd been there when it…when it happened. Had he done something to stop it? I should have asked him, but I couldn't speak.

What was the difference, anyway? The end result was the same. She was still…

The room was rising above me. The walls were growing, and the ceiling was flying up into space. No, it wasn't. I felt the impact on my hands and knees, but I didn't really understand that it was me who was hitting the floor. I was falling. All I remember is the room spinning and twirling above me and the coppery smell of Eileen's fresh blood in my nose and wetness on my hands and face and knowing that this time it _had_ been my fault and I wasn't fast enough to get there in time, and now she was…

* * *

…lights...an ambulance… 

An _ambulance?__There's no need for an ambulance, not any more…_

But I could hear the sirens outside my window. I didn't want to open my eyes, just wanted to lie there forever and pretend as if none of this was happening, but I couldn't do that. After several seconds, I managed to pull myself to my feet and make my way to the window.

There it was, just outside, with its lights going around in the darkness (for the sun had set while I was running around and it was now officially night). As I watched, it pulled out of its space in the little parking lot in front of the building, rolled out into the street, and turned left at the intersection on its way to the hospital.

_To the hospital? Shouldn't she be going to the morgue? Does this mean that she's not…_

Not…

No. Cynthia had been taken away in an ambulance, and there was no doubt there. I had closed her sightless eyes myself. The ambulance didn't tell me anything.

The apartment was quiet now. There were no police reports booming over the radio, no sirens or shouts or pounding on my door…only the glow of the neon lights coming through the windows and circles of brightness from my table lamps. It was dark outside now. I felt more alone than I had in days.

There was another red note under the door, and a white piece of paper. The paper was a rectangle of heavy card stock, about the size of a small paperback book, with a picture of what looked like a demon or a devil on it. It reminded me vaguely of Jasper's T-shirt, but then again maybe all devils look alike, I don't know.

_I don't think I can protect myself.  
He's truly insane.  
I can't hold on any longer.  
His power can't be measured.  
I was so scared today that I sealed off the back of the storage room.  
I wonder if Eileen Galvin is okay.  
She has no idea what's going on…  
But she's in danger nevertheless._

_July 13_

Too little too late, Joseph. Way too late. Then, I laughed. Like I could have done anything about it even if I'd known. No, not me. Who was I to talk? I was way too late, too. Every time, when the single person there with me…

No, this time was different. There had been _two_ people, apart from me and the little kid. There had been Eileen and…

…_the blond guy. What about him?_

I knew I was on to something, maybe something important, so I dropped down onto my couch and stared at the note in my hands without really seeing it.

_Where did he go, anyway? I haven't seen him in a while. The last time was in Richard's room. He was standing by the window, just like little Walter had. And then he disappeared into thin air…just like little Walter. _

It was time. Time to stop and take as long as it was going to take to figure out just what the hell was going on. My head was in no condition to do this, hadn't been for days, but I knew that I had no choice. I had a gut feeling that, if I just sat for a few minutes and went over everything that I'd seen and learned, that sooner or later I'd find the key to the puzzle.

_Little Walter. If he's not the key, then he's damn close to it. He seems as if he can appear and disappear at will. Maybe he __**is**__ a ghost. I don't know. He doesn't look like one._

_But he's not the only one who can do that. The blond guy can, too. But every time I ran into him, I ended up with more questions than answers. He never asked me a thing…_

…_unlike Cynthia and Jasper and Andrew and Richard. They were all looking for something, usually the way out (except for Jasper), and they weren't shy about finding out if I could help them. But not this guy. He didn't seem to care one way or another if I was around…he was doing his own thing. He wasn't looking for a way out, or trying to find someone…he was…_

_What __**was**__ he doing there, anyway? Apart from pointing out of windows and giving me Eileen's old doll? He was pointing at Eileen's window…_

_Eileen. Is that why he's here? He seemed pretty interested in her just now…knocking on her door and then walking from my peephole over to…_

Then it hit me.

_He knocked on her door. Three times. _

_**But he didn't wait for her to answer.**_

There was that _click_ again, of things coming together.

_Joseph knew that she was in danger. Whatever or whoever was the threat, he knew that something was wrong and that it was going to involve her. Who could it have been but…_

Things were starting to make a _lot_ of sense now. Sense, that is, if the insane idea that was slowly taking shape in my head was anywhere near the truth.

…_and then, Eileen ended up nearly dead. Who did that? __**He**__ must have done it. There was nobody else around. Nobody but me and the kid, and that kid's too small to do those things to her. And that's why I didn't see anybody else in the room…he must have disappeared before I got in there. Just like he disappeared from Richard's window. Maybe that's why she said "Thanks" to the kid…maybe he stopped it. But how could a little kid like him stop a guy bigger than me from beating her to death? What power, what hold over him could he have? Who could he be to him?..._

…_**be**__ him._

Bingo.

_That's impossible. _

_But that hasn't stopped anything from happening yet today, Henry. Back up and let's lay things out systematically. See where we end up._

_The blond man and little Walter can both appear and disappear at will. Like ghosts. Therefore, they may be ghosts…which means that they must be dead._

…_and who do we know of who's dead? Cynthia, Jasper, Richard, Andrew…_

…_and Walter Sullivan. Who died ten years ago as a young man. So, the little kid couldn't be him…but he __**has**_ _to be. Andrew said so. And Andrew would have known, from what he said._

_But there had been only ten deaths when he died. Why would he kill himself after ten? If I'm right, he wasn't done with what he wanted to do…whatever it was. So why? Because he was captured, I guess…he thought he had no choice. And how can a dead man still kill people?_

_What's the point of all of this, anyway? I don't see any overall purpose. The only things in common in each place are that somebody dies. I didn't get a plaque…this time, so that's not it. And this is all far too much trouble to go to for a practical joke or something like that. Why is he doing this?_

That was the biggest question. I turned the demon card over and over in my hands, but I came up dry. The back of the card was blank, but the outline of the devil was faintly visible through the paper.

_This demon. I wonder if he's worshipped or feared by whoever made this..._

_The cult. What did Andrew say? That Walter was really into that cult stuff? What if…_

I grabbed my scrapbook from my pocket and flipped it open to the piece of cult scripture I'd found in Wish House.

_Offer the Blood of the Ten Sinners and the White Oil.  
Be then released from the bonds of the flesh, and gain the Power of Heaven._

_Ten Sinners…could it be…_

What if this cult stuff actually…worked? What if Walter had read this, too, and hadn't just written it off like I had? What if he'd…

…_gotten his ten blood samples and then killed himself for the Power of Heaven? Whatever that was? And now…_

It was impossible, damn it! People don't come back from the dead. Cult rituals can't resurrect them.

_And dead people sure as hell can't kill. _

But the impossible had already been happening today, all around me. I was traveling through strange places inhabited by murderous ghosts, being transported back and forth by magical Holes, and killing unnatural things that smelled as if they should have been dead for months. Nothing seemed truly impossible any more. So, as long as I ignored that huge problem…there was no better explanation.

_There is no __**other**__ explanation at all. Perhaps a surreal world calls for a surreal explanation._

I should have laughed at my own stupidity then, but I couldn't quite manage it. All this time I'd thought that _I_ was the reason that people were dying, when it was really him.

_**Now**__ it makes sense. He's…he's not done yet. Even death couldn't stop him. He's still going. Counting them down as he goes. And that's why the little boy's eyes are so familiar-looking…they look just like the grown man's._

_That's got to be it. It fits all of the facts. And nothing else makes sense. It's crazy, it's beyond anything I could have imagined…but it has to be true. _

_Walter Sullivan is back from the grave, ten years after his own suicide, and he's still carrying out his plan._

I didn't know how the hell he'd managed to cheat death. That was the big leap of faith in all of this. But it had to be him. It was the only explanation that made any sense, if you were willing to accept the idea that cult rituals could resurrect the dead. And at that point, no other explanation came close to accounting for everything that I'd seen and read. I turned the pages of my scrapbook until I was almost at the beginning.

_Through the Ritual of the Holy Assumption, he built a world…_

That he'd done. The places I'd been, the monsters I'd been killing, and all of it…it was his doing. I was living in his world, the world he'd made through his murders, and like the scrap of paper said, those who died there haunted it forever. I'd seen them with my own eyes. And others, too…those must have been other people who died in Walter's twisted worlds. Well, I knew that there had been at least ten others who fit the bill.

It was all making some sense now. I didn't understand how it was possible, but it had to be. I didn't know why, either. But I knew now that the blond-haired man in the coat was no longer a childlike, sympathetic presence, but a killer. An undead killer who was out for blood, and whatever he was trying to accomplish with all of this death and suffering couldn't be anything that I'd want to see happen.

I shook my head. "That's crazy," I muttered to myself. "People don't come back from the dead. It's impossible." I couldn't get past the idea that there was _no way_ that this could all be happening, not like that…

Well, I'd compromise. I'd go with the idea of undead serial killer until something that made more sense came along. _Like it mattered,_ I realized, and I laughed at myself again. _You can't do a damn thing about what's happening, so it doesn't make any difference what you think._ Except to me. For now, I'd have to keep an open but guarded mind…especially when it came to the guy in the coat.

I was still holding the note clenched tightly in my hands. My eye caught the part about sealing off the storage room. Storage room…what was he talking about? There wasn't a storage room in my apartment. Just the front and kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, and laundry room. That was it. Big enough for me, but a rather small apartment, granted…come to think of it, unusually small for this building. I'd have to talk to Frank about that when I got out of here.

See? Isn't it funny? I was still thinking "when". "If" was still happily coexisting with "when", somehow.

I unloaded my pockets. Something was missing, it seemed. Not that I'd dropped anything, but almost as if something was absent…

That was it. There was no plaque this time. Maybe it was because there was nothing after Chaos…or maybe it was because...

_There's one way to check._

The handprints were still in the hallway, of course. There was a fresh one there, but you wouldn't have seen it unless you knew where to look. It was faint and ghostly beside the others, barely pink against the red and white of the rest of the count. Maybe that meant that...that she might still be alive. Maybe.

There were voices coming through the hole into her bedroom. It was the same two policemen I'd heard on the radio, earlier, telling me that she wasn't going to make it. So for now, she was still alive. Alive, and on her way to the local hospital…where I couldn't check on her. Didn't matter if I wanted to, anyway. It wasn't as if I could stroll out of the building and get in my truck and drive to the hospital to see how she was doing. I had no way of getting there at all. But at least she _was_ still alive.

Then I saw something that made my skin crawl. Screw the ghosts, screw the monsters, screw the blood and guts and all of that. You haven't really felt your flesh drop off of your bones until you've been faced with a two-foot stuffed Robbie the Rabbit looking at you through a peephole, mouth and face covered in blood, pointing at you as if to say "You're next".

I can hear you laughing. I'd tell you to try it some day, but I don't want anybody to have to come as close to messing themselves as I did at that moment. Nobody deserves that.


	15. St Jerome's Hospital 1

I readied myself for the trip back through the Hole to whatever awaited me next. But on some level, I didn't give a damn any more. It didn't really matter where I went or who I met there...it was always the same thing. Monsters trying to kill me, places that didn't make sense...and no matter what I did or how hard I tried, somebody was going to end up dead. Why did it matter _where_ it happened?

Who was going to be the next to die? Frank? One of the other tenants? Somebody I'd never met before? Or was it finally my turn? In a way, I almost wished it would be…not that I had a death wish, not by a long shot, but more because that way at least I could be there to _do_ something about it. Futile though the effort might be. Still…

So you can imagine my reaction when I squared my shoulders, braced myself once more for the inevitable and unknown, and opened the bathroom door…and found that somebody had filled the entire Hole with cement. The fastest-drying cement in history, too. I was staring dumbly at a solid wall of hard gray rockiness. There was no way in hell that I was going through the Hole again, not while it was in this state. So that wasn't an option any more. I was stuck in my apartment again. Back to square one.

_Just as well, actually. Every time I go out, somebody dies. If I stay in, the only person to die will be me. That, I can live with. Heh._

Anyway, it left me at a loss for what to do next. At least, when I was out there (wherever _there_ happened to be at the time), I had something to do…that is, try to figure out how to get the hell out. Here, there was nothing at all, nothing to do but sit and think. I'd had more than enough time for that over the last several days, thanks. And now, I had a lot more to think about…and no way of acting on any of it.

I sat down on the edge of the bathtub and stared at the Hole for a minute or two as I pondered the current state of things. When all was said and done, the only net change in my apartment since I'd woken up that morning was that I was much more tired, my bathroom was partly demolished, and I had a lot more stuff in my chest. Nutrition drinks, weaponry, guns and ammo…even a ragged old doll, now. All of which were going to be useless to me inside.

Well, not entirely useless. Not if I got desperate enough. But that wasn't going to happen. I wouldn't let it.

I realized then that the apartment was almost completely silent. The howls and cries that normally came through the Hole were gone, of course, but I couldn't hear anything else going on. No crashes or banging on my door or possessed dryers…

_The dryer. In the laundry room…the one place I haven't visited in a while. I wonder if…_

_What the hell. Nothing better to do right now._

I hauled myself up and headed down the hallway to have a look.

As I walked down the hallway, my eye caught something strange in the wall above the cabinet by the hole. There was a weird bump there, splotchy and stringy. It didn't look like the bump I'd seen in that same place in my nightmare. That had looked like a face…this didn't look like anything I knew. Stare as I might at it, its shape was unrecognizable to me. I watched it for several seconds, but nothing happened. Then I poked at it with the handle of my axe. It was soft and squishy, too. Well, it didn't seem to be doing much, so I left it alone. It worried me, though.

In the laundry room, the door to the dryer was still half-open. In the wall above it, above the sprayed blood, was a strange set of stains, all clustered in the middle of the wall. They formed the shape of a V. I had to squint to see their details in the harsh light, but after a few moments they resolved themselves into a fuzzy picture…of some sort of arcane demon. Some sort of _familiar_ arcane demon. As a matter of fact, I'd just seen something like it…

I pulled the white card from my pocket and held it up in front of the bumps. Line for line, they were identical. The demon on the card matched the demon on the wall. Same size, same shape, everything. Did it mean something? Probably. Any idea what? Hell no. So, where did that get me? I stared from one to the other for a few moments, then took the card in both hands and pressed it to the bumps on the wall.

The room went dark, and my ears were filled with a rumbling sound, like the noise of the rotating floors in the prison. I reached for the light switch. Nothing doing. So, I braced myself against the door and waited.

When the lights came back on a few seconds later, I could see that the wall had moved backward a few inches. There was a clean space on the floor where the bloodstains ended in a line, where the wall had been before. But I didn't hear any water spraying all over my bathroom, so whatever had moved the wall hadn't taken out the shower plumbing, at least.

The wall itself had changed, too. The demons were gone, and a few lines of text were handwritten in the middle.

_After he did the Ritual of the Holy Assumption,  
other worlds began to force their way into his universe  
and it began to swell horribly.  
But his universe is different than ours – it has limits.  
And in the limits of that universe, he rules as a king.  
And in the deepest part of his kingdom is his Mother._

More cult scripture. I'd seen the stuff about the other worlds before, of course, on the piece of old book that I'd taken from behind the bookshelf that morning, and now I definitely knew that it was all true.

_So…he really…he really did it. I mean, I had kind of figured that out…but now I know for sure._

But the part about his mother…that was new.

_His Mother…_

The more I did and saw, and the more people died, the more I was coming across mentions of mothers…starting with the first note under my door, and now this. Someone, it seemed, was very focused on his mother…and somehow, this was speaking to me in a way that the other writings had not. This was important, but I didn't know _why._ Not yet.

Above and below the inscription were small rectangular depressions in the wall. There were ones on either side, too, a few feet away from the center of the writing. As I peered at them, I could see patterns in the depressions…designs. Drawings. An eye with wavy lines, and a woman with a veil…undulating curves, and abstract ovals and lines. Familiar images, all of them. I grabbed the four plaques from my chest and compared them to the patterns on the wall. Yep, four for four, the same designs.

The next step was obvious. I took each plaque and placed it into its matching depression on the wall. The colors of the plaques were still deep and rich, and glowed like dark jewels against the grayness of the wall. They slid into their holes with a satisfying _click_. As soon as the fourth one was in place, the lights flickered, a great roar came from directly in front of me, and my knees gave way as the floor shook. I grabbed onto the shelves next to me and covered my eyes with my arm.

After it all stopped, I opened my eyes. Gaping in front of me was another Hole, this one perfectly round and painted identically to the ones in the other worlds. A light breeze came through the Hole at me. It smelled of…

The usual stench of blood and filth and death.

_What did you expect? A light mountain breeze? The fresh smell of pine?_

_Would have been nice, yeah._

Whatever. Clearly, this was the next step. I had no idea where I was going, but that wasn't new. Still, I got the feeling that the change of location from bathroom to laundry room had to mean something…guess I'd find out what soon.

As I pulled myself in, I thought of Eileen, on her way to the hospital, and hoped vainly that she might still, somehow, be alive…

* * *

Lying down, but not on my face. I was on my side. That was a relief. The surface was neither cold nor hard…

_Linoleum…indoors, probably. _

Noises came to me, and I struggled to open my eyes. I was in a medium-sized room, and it was white…or dingy dirty white. Or at least it had been, once. The ceiling stretched gray above me, a maze of bare pipes and beams and wires, with a single overhead lamp with four bulbs in it. The lamp was off. It reminded me of something I'd seen in TV or in a movie…something institutional…I couldn't put my finger on it. To my left was a table covered in a heavy dingy cotton sheet, streaked with blood, like the walls. The white paint was peeling off under the blood spatters. But that wasn't so unusual by now, especially after the last place I'd been.

A familiar smell was in the air. Well, _another_ familiar smell, in addition to the stench of old blood and rot and rust. There was a chemical smell…like disinfectant or something. That was when I realized that I was on the floor of a room in a hospital. It was the dirtiest hospital I'd ever seen, but like I said that didn't really mean anything at this point.

As I pushed myself up, I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. There was a tall fabric screen standing between me and the other side of the room, and a shadow moving behind the screen. It was a few seconds before the shadow became the figure of a man. He was bending over a table at waist height, arms in front of him, moving rhythmically over a second person lying flat on the table, and as I blinked the sleep out of my eyes it occurred to me that this might be something that I really shouldn't be seeing. The squishing and slurping noises just made it worse.

Then, I noticed that the other body wasn't moving at all, and it was the man's _hands_ that were moving around the body's abdomen, up and down, as if probing around in…

_Oh Jesus. What the HELL is he doing?_

Something that I didn't want to be any part of. I must have made some sound, though, since I saw his head jerk and his hands stop probing, and the long-haired figure in the heavy coat moved to the edge of the screen. I knew who it was before he came around to face me.

_The man in the coat from 207. Again. What…_

He had even more blood on him than before. His face and hair were splattered with it, and I could smell it on him. He walked slowly toward me, hunched over, head forward, and his eyes stared at me without blinking as if to say, _You're next, Henry._ I half-expected him to lunge at me at any moment. Now that I think about it, he should have just jumped forward and yelled _BOO!_ I would have dropped like a rock.

I managed to get up somehow and _not_ trip over my own feet as I turned and ran for the door. It slammed shut behind me, and I leaned back against it to catch my breath and listen. I heard nothing from the room I'd just left, and I knew that I was lucky to have gotten out of there. Damn lucky. There was a question poking at my brain, but not enough to make itself known, so I ignored it for the time being.

I was now in a hospital lobby, or something like it. The room had doors leading off in all directions, and the same smell of disinfectant. There was less blood, though. That didn't last, because of the swarm of bird-bats that buzzed up from the floor. After a minute or so of the usual exertions on my part, they lay in their own little red puddles on the tile.

I tried the doors at the end of the hallways, the ones that looked as though they should lead out. Of course, they didn't work. They were stuck…very, very stuck. Naturally. So, I got out my notebook and pen and flipped to a new, clean page. Map time.

The first door I tried led to a small office-type room with shelves and papers and not much else of interest. There were a couple of old desks and chairs. Everything was the usual dirty and dusty, except for a single metal object on a far table. It was one of those knives with a retractable blade, the kind of edge you break off when it gets worn to expose a new one. A paper or box cutter. It was cold and heavy in my hand, and its blade flicked out readily. It _might_ have been useful as a weapon, but only if I were to run into something slow-moving, with no offense whatsoever, and amenable to sitting there quietly while I busted my butt slashing it up enough to make it bleed to death. Or for a one-time throw. In other words, it was useless. Still, you never know when you're going to have to open a cardboard box…or not. So I stuffed it in my pocket and kept going. Pack rats 'r' us.

The next room was much more interesting. On the table in front of me was a small white piece of paper with a big, loopy scrawl on it.

_I lost Eileen Galvin's hospital room key.  
She was a patient brought in with severe injuries.  
I wonder if I left it in one of the other hospital rooms. I really hope not…_

What a weird little note. Probably written by a nurse or a doctor, who had managed to _lose_ a key. Somehow. But this meant that Eileen was here, and that she wasn't dead, at least not when she got here. She might still be alive…although I didn't know how she could have been, after what that bastard did to her. But now I knew what I had to do. Kind of. At least I had some idea. That helped.

_I'll be damned…after all that's happened, for once I'm actually ending up in a place that I __**wanted**__ to visit. Not like this, though._

The big lightboard on the other side of the room was full of X-rays and photographs and reports and forms, stuck up haphazardly with tape. There was writing there too, random words and numbers with arrows pointing to the pictures. I couldn't tell if the pictures were all of one person, or if any of them were of Eileen. I stared at the words for what seemed like forever…they were real words, I knew that, but somehow I couldn't understand what they meant, and I felt like I _should_. Was I really that tired? Or was something else wrong with me? Maybe it was the headache…

I was just starting to get good and aggravated when a single picture caught my eye. It was a little instant-camera picture, unlike the others. I pulled it from the board and held it up to the light to see it better.

_Eileen._

Just as I'd last seen her…beaten, bruised, and bloody. Her eyes were purple, from smeared makeup and bruising, and were swollen completely closed. Her name was written on the white border of the picture as well.

_So they were working on treating you. Then you weren't too far gone. You might still be here…_

In one of the rooms, perhaps. She had to be here, and I had to find her no matter what. I owed that to her, at least. After what she'd been through…because of me.

_Eileen…_

Damn it, it was the least I could do.

Later on, much later, I looked everywhere for that picture of her. I thought I'd kept it – there's no reason why I wouldn't have – but I couldn't find it anywhere. I must have dropped it in the hospital somewhere.

* * *

There wasn't much else of interest in the room. There were some files on a shelf with the St. Jerome's Hospital logo on them. It was the closest hospital to my apartment, several blocks away. It made sense that the ambulance would have brought Eileen here.

Then, I walked back into the hallway and stopped in my tracks. On the dirty floor at my feet was a small rectangular object, purple, with a handle on one side. It was surprisingly heavy in my hand, but dainty and shiny, covered in plum-colored satin. I recognized it at once. I had seen it through the hole into Eileen's room, hanging from the hooks on her wall. It was her handbag, and it looked as if it matched the purple dress she'd had on when she was attacked. More evidence that she was here. I was tempted to open it to see if was really hers...but I'd been trained long ago that going into a woman's handbag was something I Should Not Do, and the training stuck. Well, I'd keep it safe for her for now, until I could return it to her. I could always drop it off at home if it got in my way.

See, that's something I had to do. I had to keep thinking as if I was going to get out of this. No matter what happened. I know, I'm not Mr. Sunshine and Happy Fuzzies, not by a long, long shot. But what else was I going to do? Walking around telling myself that I was going to die any moment wouldn't have gotten me anywhere. No, that's wrong. It would probably have gotten me killed. To be honest, it didn't even occur to me to do anything else. Yeah, I knew that my chances were pretty slim – or at least they seemed that way at the time – but I was running on fumes anyway, so I might as well do what I could. And one thing I could do was...whatever I could do for Eileen, who wouldn't have been beaten almost to death if I had gotten to her sooner.

There was a Hole next door, and a larger room across the hall that held a single bed shoved into the corner. Maybe Eileen had been treated here. I had no way of knowing for sure. The next room didn't have much in it, either, but there was a medical chart on the desk. I snatched it up, in case it would tell me something more about her, but it was just the chart of a baby from a few decades back. Irrelevant...and useless. I dropped it back onto the table, grabbed the first-aid kit that rested on the table by the desk, and headed for the door.

The last door on that side of the hallway led to stairs up to the next floor. Those could wait for the moment. Through the door across the hallway were long metal shelves, a gurney with a large lump on top covered by a sheet, and

HOLY MOTHER OF GOD WHAT THE HELL ARE THOSE?

Striding toward me on long legs were two tall gray figures with streaming white hair, smeared faces and horrible bumps on their abdomens. I couldn't tell if they were male or female, as if that mattered anyway...certainly, not as much as the metal pipes in their hands that they were swinging at me as if this was tee-ball practice and yours truly was the tee and the ball in one. Nearly lost the last pair of boxers right there, but I recovered, lifted my axe and went to work.

A few long minutes later, I was sitting on the floor in that room, propped up against the shelves on the far wall, out of breath and more bruised and bloody than I'd been in forever. My feet were out in front of me, and I was staring at the two things lying dead on the floor and trying to figure out which way was up again.

The place seemed to be a supply room. It was a cozy little room, actually, the sort of place where the staff probably came to talk privately or take a breather from the hectic hospital corridors. The shelves were draped with clear plastic to protect the contents, but there wasn't much on them, just some clean sheets and bandages and stuff like that. There were a few bottles with labels that I couldn't read from where I was sitting. No hurry there...as long as nothing else came through the door for a few minutes, I would be safe.

I watched the pools of blood under the bodies slowly spread and merge. As I sat there, the pools crept across the floor, and swallowed up the smaller spots of blood that lay in their paths. I couldn't remember which red splotches were mine and which were theirs. Did it matter?

_My blood is the same color as theirs..._

That thought made me feel worse for some reason.

When I got up a while later, there was a sudden grinding pain in my arm as something moved in an unfamiliar way, and I realized that I had probably broken a bone. Guess I was lucky that it hadn't happened sooner...given the way those gray things had been swinging their pipes around, I was lucky that that was the worst I'd gotten, too. Hurt like hell, though. I'd have to head back to my couch as soon as possible. I got to my feet and held my arm against me with the other one (_yep, definitely broke something…_).

Something unusual caught my eye on the near shelf. I hadn't been able to see it from the floor. It was a small dark brown bottle that came to a point near the top. I couldn't read the label, but whatever it was, it looked as if it was some sort of concentrate or something. Well, this _was_ a hospital...it shouldn't have been surprising that they'd have strong medications on hand, right? It was mine now, anyway, and the way things were going it was likely that I was going to need it. Whatever it was. I picked it up and put it in my pocket slowly, trying not to jostle the broken bone.

That just about did it for that floor. Only one door remained, the one through which I'd originally come, and there was no way that I'd be heading back through it any time soon if I didn't have to. So, back home for a rest and a date with the storage chest.

* * *

If you don't mind, I'm going to go off on a tangent now. I'm curious...do you find this stuff dull? It seems to me that all of this boils down to "Henry enters room, finds something / kills something, enters another room, ditto, enters another room...and after a while, somebody ends up dead". Not very exciting. Probably not what you were expecting, right?

Sorry that it isn't more thrills-a-minute. Believe me, you really had to be there. It sure seemed that way when it was happening. I wish it _had_ been that dull...it would have been a lot less hair-raising, and far less dangerous. You know, I'm not sure if I'll ever look at horror movies in the same way again. They're only fun when you know that you're safe in your seat, being pulled this way and that and being worked from a distance. After that…I have this feeling that it's all going to seem too real now.

The problem here is that I want to make sure that you know what really happened down there...boring as it might be sometimes. So, sorry about that, but there's nothing I can do about it. I'll try to make it more descriptive, though. But I won't lie, or embellish.

* * *

Not much up at home this time. It took several minutes for things to heal up, time which I spent emptying my pockets of things I didn't need right away, then resting on the couch picking at the pills on the upholstery and watching the blood melt away. It was reassuring to know that as long as I didn't get myself killed out there, I could just come back and plop down on the couch and within five minutes I'd be back to normal. Broken arm and all. 


	16. St Jerome's Hospital 2

The elevator at the end of the hospital lobby was broken. Pushing the call button had no effect, and the doors looked as if they had been eaten away by something I couldn't imagine, so it was up the stairs. Just a short flight, with floor labels at the landing in the middle. You know the type. These were old and dirty like everything else, but at least the lights worked. Not a big deal.

Not compared to the second floor, anyway. The stairs led to the end of a long, long corridor, with doors stretching in pairs far into the distance. At the other end was some sort of wire barricade, round, blocking the rest of the hall, with what looked like a large broken bed hanging in midair just beyond. Behind me was the elevator, and in front of me were three wheelchairs rolling up and down the hallway on their own.

I stayed where I was and watched them for a few seconds. Each was moving to its own rhythm...slow, then fast, then wheeling around and coming back down the hallway, swerving to avoid the others. They were the only movement and sound in the hall, and their rattling and clanking echoed eerily off of the grungy tile and gray walls. While I stood there, I thought of Hell, and wondered whose this would be. Whose Hell...and then, whose dream...

_Somebody hates hospitals, I guess. And subways, and prisons, too. I can understand the hospitals and prisons, but…subways? Commercial buildings? And he really had problems with the apartment building...everywhere except outside my door._

But I didn't have the luxury of pondering that at length. The wheelchairs were now all coming down the hall toward me, and they demanded my attention. Functionally, they were mobile and unpredictable hurdles, and I'd have to be sure to keep out of the way.

There were about two dozen or so doors on the hallway. None of them seemed to have room numbers or anything helpful like that. Of course not. This wasn't supposed to be easy, right?

_Wonder if..._

I approached the one wheelchair that was rolling slowly away from me, raised my axe and let fly. The chair stopped rolling for a moment, then started to turn toward me. I felt the familiar red headache coming on, and realized that trying to kill them was probably just a waste of time. They had the same effects as ghosts, so I'd have to dodge them carefully as if they _were_ ghosts.

So, that left me with a hallway with lots of doors.

_What's behind door number one? _No time like the present to find out.

If the first floor had seemed weird, the things I found in these rooms were like scenes from a nightmare...some psychotic medical student's nightmare. I don't remember what was in which rooms, but I'll never forget the things I saw in there. Rotting, unidentifiable body parts swinging back and forth on a metal platform that creaked and moaned in the silence. Pairs of incubators, broken and useless, with a long white tube stretching in between. A lone vase of flowers, dried up and withered, with a candle standing on the floor nearby like an offering to some long-forgotten god. A couple of clean rooms that weren't so clean any more. One room had a wire floor with bird-bats buzzing beneath. There was a dead body in one room, soaked in blood, with brown mushrooms growing _out of it._ It all gave me a feeling in the pit of my stomach that I hadn't felt in almost ten years...since...since...

_Since that art history class in freshman year. We were looking at...what's-his-name. Who was it that painted...God, it was Bosch. I remember looking at the "Hell" part of the "Garden of Earthly Delights". It was up on the projection screen in glaring color, twenty feet tall. I'd never seen anything like it before...nobody had. We were all really green then, just starting out. The professor was out to wake us up from our usual art-in-the-dark naps, I guess. He spent easily fifteen or twenty minutes on that image alone. I remember being repulsed and fascinated at the same time, and feeling as if the earth was moving under my feet and that same sick feeling, like someone was rooting around in my bowels...and judging from the faces of some of the other people in the class when the lights came up, I wasn't the only one._

_Now, I saw that picture before me again. The huge two-trunked creature in the middle with people moving around inside its hollow body was looking back over its shoulder. I could feel its eyes upon me. Those eyes…they were beyond agony, beyond terror, beyond any feeling at all. All they held was weariness. It was the unthinkable made real, and nothing made sense and the rules didn't apply any more. Just like here. The same feeling. _

_But Bosch's people were all alive and suffering, and these...these fleshy things, whatever they had once been, were very much dead. Thank God, for them and for me._

I found Eileen, too. Sort of. Not really...unless you count an enormous breathing _HEAD_. It filled the opposite end of one of the rooms, from crown to chin, its heavy breathing echoing through the room. It looked just like her, except that its skin was lined all over in purple veins and its eyeballs whizzed around the whites of its eyes. Those eyes followed me as I walked, watched me as I stopped and stared at her, and kept staring, cross-eyed, as I poked at her nose with the tip of my axe. No reaction, of course. Very freaky, but ultimately neither a threat nor a clue, so I left her alone in her room to goggle at the walls.

I also ran into a few more of my tall gray friends from downstairs. Now that I had some idea of what I was facing, I was able to fight them more effectively. The first one I ran into seemed to fill the tiny room, but she (_she?_) staggered under the axe just as the ones downstairs did. But still..._Something isn't right here_, I thought as she slumped to the floor.

I found two more in another room down the hall. Fortunately, they didn't seem to be coordinating their attacks, and I was able to chop away at them without too much trouble. Then, I realized just what it was that didn't seem right. I heard it and didn't believe my ears. Then, the other thing stepped up to me, and I swung again. It bent in two, and

_burped._

No doubt about it any more...these things _burped_ when you hit them. Seriously. You have to imagine them to get the full impact of this. They were tall and gray, could break your arm with a single blow (which was partly why the first two had been such a nasty surprise), and were ugly as hell, but...they burped. Not just a little exhalation, either. It was a big, round beer belch, the kind you'd have loved to be able to make at will when you were five.

I must have stood there with my jaw on the floor for a couple of seconds, because the first one managed to hit me hard enough to knock me into the wall. It didn't last long after that, though, and when they were both down for good, their weirdly bloated bellies made a strange sense. Beer bellies, beer burps, right?

Yeah, I know. Whatever. Still, you've got to take 'em as you find 'em.

* * *

Some time later, I'd made my way down to the other end of the hall. Twenty-something rooms down, two to go, and no sign at all of Eileen. I hadn't even been worried about finding a way out of here...not yet. Not until I'd either found her or determined that she wasn't here. 

The bed I'd seen hanging just past the wire blockage was swinging back and forth slowly over a pit, and the hallway continued beyond it. Perhaps, if she wasn't in either of these two rooms, she might be down there. With a little luck, I'd find a way past the deep, dark hole if I had to...after all, so far, I'd been able to get from point A to point B sooner or later, right? Whoever had planned this out had made sure of that.

The door on the right was locked. That told me that I was definitely on the right path. No point in having a locked door if getting through it wasn't needed. At least, you'd hope so. Too bad I didn't have a key. Oh well.

One door left...and there it was, hanging in the semi-darkness, in the mouth of a three-foot-tall bronze statue of a _snake_, of all things. Who knows what _that_ was supposed to be telling me. The snake looked almost alive in the dim light. Its eyes glistened like jewels, and as I bent to pull the key from its mouth it seemed to smile at me...

...as a metallic rattling sound filled my ears, something dropped from the ceiling, and before I could react, both the snake and I were trapped in a rusty metal cage. It was round like a birdcage...and the snake and I were both locked inside. Did that make me the bird?

The door of the cage was locked. I realized with a sinking feeling that there were now _two_ locks in my immediate future, but only one key. So far, keys had only worked in locks once before breaking or getting stuck...and if I was able to use this key on this lock, doing so might mean that I wouldn't be able to get through the last door on the hallway. And I _had_ to get through that door. But search and hack and sweat and swear as I might, nothing else seemed to be working...the door wouldn't open. Well, _that_ was a familiar feeling, at any rate.

I should have known that the planner of this particular circle of Hell would have made sure that the key slid as easily out of the opened lock as it did into the closed lock. The door squeaked as it opened, but it did open, and I still had the key.

Across the hall, to the last door. The key, God help me, turned in the lock, and I was through the door and on the other side as fast as possible, after nearly getting kneecapped by a wheelchair. This room was dimly lit, like the previous ones had been, but the stench was lesser here.

The first thing I saw was a metal cart with bottles and jars on top, with unreadable labels. Then, I heard a noise...just a small one, but I held my breath. Someone else was there with me. I knew who it was immediately. Who else could it have been?

She was lying on the bed, still dressed as she had been before. The blood was gone, but in its place were deep purple-and-red bruises and cuts. One eye was covered with a bandage, and her left arm was in a cast past the elbow with a thin sling holding it in place. Her ankle was wrapped as well, above those little purple high heels...why was she still dressed like that, anyway?

She lay on her back, deep asleep, and obviously had no idea that I was there. Still, I'd never been as happy to see anyone in my adult life as I was at that moment to see her. She was there, and she was _alive_. I stood there for a moment or two, just looking at her. No, not in _that_ way, just…well, I guess it was a mix of relief at finding her and disbelief that I'd actually managed to do it.

_What happens now? How do I get her out of here? Hopefully, I can bring her back through the Hole. After all, Richard saw the Holes, so maybe she can too. We can go through together. She can rest at my place and heal up while I work on a way to get us the hell out of this nightmare. I can probably carry her if I have to, but it would be a lot better if she could walk, just for a little._

She was stirring in her sleep, mumbling something and snuffling a little. I couldn't make out what she was saying, and I leaned in a little closer. Something was bothering her…she sounded upset…

Then, her head turned in my direction, and before I could react, she was scrambling away from me, screaming and trying to flatten herself against the wall. I stared at her for a moment before I realized what was going on. She was frightened out of her wits. Of _me_. She was panicking uncontrollably.

I didn't know what else to do, so I did something I'd never have done in the real world. I grabbed her around the shoulders and held her firmly and yelled at her to calm down. It was a rough thing to do, especially given how badly she'd been hurt, but I didn't know if anything else would get through to her. She flailed for a few seconds, still screaming, before she seemed to realize that she wasn't being attacked and dropped her arms, breathing heavily. I stepped back to give her some space.

She was facing away from me, and now I could see that the _20 / 21_ on her back was still there. _That's going to leave a hell of a scar_, I thought, then I realized that it wasn't a given at that point that either of us would live long enough to see if it did. We had to get out of there, and there wasn't a lot of time to waste. Still, getting her calmed down enough to move was probably going to take a little while, and that couldn't be helped.

Her head turned, and she eyed me warily for a moment before her shoulders dropped. "You're Henry," she said, "from next door?" Her voice was still tight and panicky, but she was working on pulling herself together. I nodded.

"What are you doing here?" she asked. Good question.

_Well, I've spent the better part of the day running from undead things through a subway and a forest and a concrete kiddie prison and a building labyrinth and our own apartment building...and watching people die. Oh, and killing things before they killed me. That's what I've been __**doing**_..._ but I have no idea why...not yet. _

"I don't…I don't know where to start," I said with a shrug, and I really didn't. The sound of my own voice echoing in that little room startled me. I couldn't remember the last time I'd heard it, actually. Really _heard_ it. And if it had that effect on me…

_Whatever I do, I have to make sure that I don't freak her out any worse than she is now. She's just woken up into this nightmare, and I know just what that's like. She's been through enough that I couldn't stop. No need to make it any worse for her than it already is._

I told her about the Hole, and the places and people, as briefly as I could, and as I spoke (which wasn't for long) I realized that there was nothing I could say or do to get past the fact that no sane person would believe a word of what I had to say. I sure as hell wouldn't have a week ago. But once you start talking about that stuff, it's not as if you can just stop in the middle of it. I heard that alien voice of mine speaking and thought, _Yeah, that's a pretty wild story, Henry. She's going to think you're nuts._

It was just after I told her that I'd seen her nearly die as well that she recoiled back from me with a frown on her face. She shook her head.

"I'm supposed to _believe_ that?" she snapped.

"But it's true," I sputtered helplessly. Lame, lame, lame. "And...there was a kid with you."

That got her attention. She stared into the distance for a moment, then nodded. "I remember now," she said slowly. "I was getting ready to go to my friend's party. The boy...protected me...from the man with the coat," she said, shaking her finger emphatically as she put the pieces together.

_The man with the coat! So he __**was**__ the one who'd attacked her!_

She looked sheepish now. "I'm sorry I didn't believe you," she smiled, still wary. "I guess there's something wrong with me."

"It's OK," I said with the most reassuring tone that I could manage (like I said, it doesn't come to me easily). "It's pretty unbelievable stuff."

"I just feel so scared," she said, with a shiver. "This place...what is it, anyway?" She looked from side to side, seeking clues that weren't there. We both ended up staring absently at the bottles on the cart for no good reason, as if their faded labels would somehow hold the key to everything.

"I don't know, either," I said. I couldn't really tell her it was a hospital...it wasn't like any hospital she would ever have seen. "But I do know," I continued, "that if you get killed here, then you die in the real world too." _Just ask Richard or Jasper or Cynthia or Andrew. _

The look in her good eye changed from bafflement to terror, and I cursed myself silently. "Anyway, the only way out of here is through that Hole," I told her quickly. "Downstairs. It goes back to my apartment. I can't get out, but nothing can get in. Nothing dangerous, anyway. You'll be safe there while I work on a way out of this mess."

She looked shocked for a moment, then doubtful. "Is that where you've been all of this time? Frank and I heard these weird noises, but we had no idea..."

"Yeah," I said. "You couldn't hear or see me, either. Nobody could. I don't know what's going on, but I think it's connected with all of this. Somebody doesn't want to let me out." _Either of us._

"But you're here," she said. "The Hole?"

"Yeah. And if I can take you back there, you'll be safe. There are...things out there, in the halls, and we need to get you out of here as soon as possible. You can rest at my place. Just being there heals me up...hopefully it can do the same for you."

She raised an eyebrow at me with an amused look on her face. "'Come back to my place...it'll fix that broken arm right up.' Not many guys would have the guts to try that one."

"Well, it's true in this case. Don't worry. I'm not going to let anything happen to you." _…I hope…_

She looked at me skeptically, but after a second of two she struggled to her feet. "OK," she said. "Take me with you." Then, she put her little hand in mine, and I squeezed it reassuringly. It was cold. She smiled at me.

_Now what?_

* * *

"Huh?" 

I was still holding her hand, and she was still looking at me.

"Now what? The Hole, right?"

"Yeah, the Hole," I said.

"Let's go."

As she walked toward the door, I saw that she was limping. She wasn't going to be moving too quickly on that ankle. If we weren't careful, she'd end up a sitting duck.

"Eileen, wait," I said. She stopped and turned to me. "The halls…it's not safe out there. I'll lead. You stay behind me and keep your eyes open, OK?" As soon as I'd said that, I bit my lip. It felt wrong somehow, talking to her like that.

_Why was I so nervous about…well, it was like I was ordering her around or something._

But she didn't get upset or angry or frightened. She just shook her head and said, "Yeah, I'm not going to be much help anyway. Lead on." She smiled ruefully at her leg. "I'll try not to get us both killed." Her smile drooped. Before I could stop myself, I took her hand and squeezed it again. She looked up at me.

"Sorry to be…well, you know," she said.

"It's OK," I said. "We're going to be OK."

"I hope so."

"You ready?"

She nodded, and I stepped in front of her and opened the door.

* * *

Immediately, I noticed the silence in the hallway. The wheelchairs were gone, and the only sounds were my footsteps and the click of Eileen's heels…and the _thump-thump-thump_ of two more tall gray things striding down the hall toward us. 

"Oh my God. What…are _those_?" Eileen whispered.

"Haven't figured that out yet," I replied. I gripped the axe in my hand more tightly. Two were a challenge, even in a long hall. Fortunately, the hall was narrow enough that I might be able to keep both of them from coming at me at once. "Stay behind me, but not too close. I don't want to hit you accidentally."

"Got it," she said. And sure enough, she stayed out of range until the job at hand was done. Didn't hear a sound out of her, actually, which meant that as soon as the second gray thing hit the floor, I planted my boot in its skull and turned to check on her.

She was leaning against one of the doors, hand on the knob, looking very, very pale. Her breath was coming in short gasps, and her eye was wide and fastened on the things that I'd just killed. When I reached past her and lifted her hand off of the knob, that eye rose to my face and got even wider, if that was possible, and the look changed from horror to terror (yes, there's a distinct difference, and I learned that at just that moment). Her hand was shaking.

_She's afraid. Of me. Again._

"Henry..."

_Definitely afraid. _Finally, I was able to talk.

"...are you OK?"

_Dammit! I __**have**__ to stop doing that..._

"...yeah...what..."

"It's OK. They...they're not getting back up."

"Yeah." There was relief in her tone. Her eyes moved back to the floor, and darted over the figures. She took a deep breath. "What are they?"

"I don't know," I said. "But they'll kill you given half a chance."

"I figured that out."

"Don't worry. I'm going to get you out of here soon."

"But what about you?"

"I'll be fine. After all, I've got this axe," I said in my best reassuring voice. This time, when her eye dropped to the rusty blade covered in blood, it was less afraid and more curious. Her eyebrow went up.

"You've been…"

"Yeah. I have a pistol, too. That helps. Look, Eileen," I said, taking her hands in mine. She met my eyes, and I saw that hers were almost the same color as mine. "I'm going to be just fine. Don't worry about me. What's important now is getting you somewhere safe."

She nodded. "I guess. Thanks."

I didn't know what to say to that. She hobbled over to one of the things and bent over it, inspecting it. Blood pooled around her shoes as she stood there. After several seconds, she straightened up and turned to me. She was still pale, but she'd stopped shaking.

"Hole now?"

_Heh. Yeah._

"Hole. C'mon."

The elevator doors at the end were intact, and the call button was lit. Why not save her some limping? I pressed the button, and the elevator rumbled to life. As Eileen came up behind me, the doors opened, and I turned to help her in. But the look on her face as she stared past me into the elevator made me drop my empty hand and lift the one with the axe in it. That was the first time I'd realized just how bad those things smelled...it was more concentrated in a confined space, I guess. But there was just one this time, thankfully. Swinging the axe in that little elevator was harder than I'd expected, so this one took a while.

And after it went down just like the others – after all that – the damn elevator wouldn't move. Up _or_ down. It just sat there, useless.

"Guess we're taking the stairs, huh?" Eileen asked.

"Yeah," I replied. "Can you..."

"Yeah. It's not that bad," she smiled.

"You sure?"

"Henry, I'm not _that_ hurt."

_Yeah, you are. I saw you nearly die back there. And you know it._ I was never a poker-face. She took one look at me and frowned.

"Look, this Hole of yours is nearby, right? So all I have to do is get down the stairs and a little more. I can do that." Another look. Another frown. "And then I'll rest up at your place. I promise."

"No hobbling around looking for food or anything."

"OK."

"Not much point, anyway. Nothing but a bottle of wine left."

She laughed. "Doesn't sound bad, actually."

I suddenly remembered the tiny purple bag hanging from my belt. "I believe this is yours," I said as I handed it to her. From the look on her face, you'd think I'd just pulled a shotgun out of my jeans or something. Okay, bad visual there. Sorry. Anyway, she grinned from ear to ear, and, goofy as it sounds, it was like a ray of sunshine that warmed me to the bone.

"You found it!" She worked the clasp open with one hand and peered inside. "Everything's there. Just like it was."

"It was on the floor downstairs. I didn't know if it was yours."

"You could have checked the driver's license in my wallet."

"Nah. Rather not go there."

"My. An officer _and_ a gentleman. Thanks."


	17. St Jerome's Hospital 3

Two more gray things greeted us as soon as we exited the stairwell to the bottom floor. The first one went down quickly as the other one made its way across the room to us, so this time it wasn't too bad. I took a few hits, but nothing major. Still, the way that Eileen took my hand in hers and looked at the cut on the back of it...

"You're hurt."

I shrugged. "That happens. No big deal. I heal up at home."

"How much of this..."

"Don't know. Lost count after a while."

"That bad?"

"No, I didn't mean..." _Don't want her to think...what?_ "Come on. Let's get out of here."

The Hole gaped wide and dark. I took her hand and led the way, slowly...

* * *

Awake. 

Check.

In bed. Again. Check.

...something was missing...groggy...had...to...remember...I shook my head to clear the fog out. That hurt. _Think, Henry, think..._

_Eileen_!

I looked around, but she wasn't there. Not on the bed, not on the floor, not in the closet. Nowhere. I peered out into the hallway, but there was no sign of her. I called her name, but there was no response.

She hadn't made it through the Hole. She was still back there. Alone and defenseless.

_SHIT!_

Something else was wrong here. When I reached the end of the hallway, I realized that the low hum that was normally a part of the front room was gone. The room was very, very quiet. The ceiling fan...it must be off. But why? I never turned it off…I always left it on, especially in the summer when it got hot on the third floor and the air conditioning wasn't always enough…

Yeah. It was off, all right. Off of the ceiling, into the table and onto the floor in a twisted heap of wood and metal. Broken wires stuck out of the base above my head. There was no fixing it, even if I'd been handy with that kind of thing. And I never have been.

Now, the apartment was completely silent. The air was thick and heavy, hanging wetly in the room, but not enough to be unbreathable, thank God, just mildly uncomfortable. I wasn't hurt much, so I wouldn't have to stay long. Just long enough to drop stuff off and...hey, Joseph left me some reading material.

I plopped onto my trusty Couch of Recuperation and glanced quickly through the notes.

_Walter killed himself by shoving a...spoon into his neck? I remember hearing that he'd committed suicide, but not how. I didn't know you could do that, actually...bleed to death from a spoon in your artery. Guess he wouldn't have had a lot of other ways to kill himself in prison. What else...12/21 found three years later...Joseph took a trip to Silent Hill, makes sense...cemetery...coffin with 11/21 on it...13/21…14/21…so, they __**did**__ exist after all…_

_Walter's coffin. Joseph found it there, in the cemetery. Empty, but for the 11/21 on its bottom. Did that mean that he was 11/21 or something? How could he have been? Who could have written that in there? What happened to Walter's body? _

_...Joseph thinks he's losing his mind...I think I know how he felt._

The last thing was a little envelope, with a tiny metal key and a note that spoke directly to me.

_You've seen that world as well...  
That horrible nightmare.  
But if you get sucked into it, it's not just a nightmare. Don't get lost in there.  
If you get pulled in, you'll be killed.  
But there's still hope.  
Maybe this "Small Key" will guide you.  
If you've seen the door with the placard set in it, look on the other side of the door.  
Then keep going down. To the deepest part of him.  
And look for the ultimate Truth._

_July 20 – Joseph_

He'd known, somehow. He'd known that he wasn't going to be the last one – God only knows how, but he did – and he knew that all of this was going to happen. The placards, the doors...he'd known. He'd written to me to tell me what to do.

...known? _Knows_, maybe. Maybe he wasn't really dead. I had no way of finding out one way or the other.

Time to go back. But as I stood up, I realized that I could still feel the slight ache in my shoulder that I'd had before, a combination of a couple of glancing shots to the arm by the gray things and the strain of swinging that old axe. It hadn't healed up, not at all. Neither had the cut on my hand.

I stared at the red streak dumbly for a second or two before it hit me. Whatever had been taking care of me, fixing my cuts and scratches and worse...well, it wasn't there any more. When the fan came off of the ceiling, it took that with it, I guess.

Well, _this_ was just getting better and better.

Time to find another option. Time to rummage around in the chest, and pull out one of the first-aid kits I'd found. I could bandage myself up a little, and maybe there might be an aspirin or something in there that would take the edge off of the soreness. Before I found one, though, my hand bumped against one of those brown nutrition drinks. I had a few of them stashed away from my travels, and although I wasn't that badly hurt, still...

The label did say "For your health". For what that was worth. I wasn't worrying about fiber or cholesterol or calories or Vitamin C or anything longer-term than going back through the Hole. So who knew if this would help. Who knew, maybe it would. That is, if the twisted logic of this nightmare held.

The stuff tasted like you'd imagine. I can still feel it on my tongue. It had the consistency of slick mud and the flavor of...slick mud. Later on, I got used to just pouring the sludge down my throat. But one good gulp and my shoulder felt like new, and the cut on my hand vanished before my eyes.

_If I could sell these things in the real world, I'd make a million._

The two-thirds-full bottle went into my pocket, and I went back through the Hole.

* * *

I was sitting on the floor. The light in the room was dim, but it still made me blink, and just as I was pulling myself to my feet I heard a noise and remembered... 

"Henry!"

Eileen was smiling at me again, and as I brushed the dust off of myself she launched herself at me and threw her good arm around my neck. I reflexively put my arms around her and suddenly

_she felt so small and alive and her skin was so soft and her hair smelled very, very nice...it had been a long time since I'd smelled that kind of scent..._

Then, I remembered myself and let her go before I could get into further trouble. She didn't seem to mind, though, and stood there beaming at me.

_Say something, stupid._

"Uh...have you been here the whole time?" I stammered.

There went the smile. "Yeah. And I didn't see any hole, either." She shook her head in frustration. "You just _disappeared_ all of a sudden."

"You...didn't see the hole?"

"No, nothing."

I turned and stared at the red runes circling the gaping darkness. "You can't see that?"

"See _what_? Henry, there's nothing there...right?"

"Huh. So I can see it...but you can't. I can go back...and you can't..."

I bit my tongue when I realized what I'd said, but it was too late. Eileen curled into herself and looked around frantically.

"I can't stay here by myself," she said. "I'll be cursed. I know it. Don't ask me how," she snapped. "I just do. Sorry...I didn't mean...you know. But...what am I going to _do_?" Her voice rose in fright.

_Say something, stupid!_

"I...I might know a way to save you," I said. I crossed my arms and did my damnedest to sound as though I had some idea what I was talking about. "Do you know about someone named Joseph?"

She leaned back against a wall.

"Yeah," she said, with a nod. "He was the guy...who lived...in your apartment..._before you_." There was that shaking finger again, too. "I think he was a journalist or something. He seemed like an OK guy. Quiet, though, like you. He disappeared about six months before you moved in..."

"Disappeared?" _So maybe he __**was**__ still alive..._

"Yeah. Never found out what happened to him. Nobody knows. But towards the end, he started acting really weird."

"Let me guess. Locked himself in his room, wouldn't come out, strange noises?"

She stared at me with a very strange look. "How did you know?"

"Mike noticed too."

"Mike...in 301, right? The guy with...uh..."

"With the magazines."

"You've been…"

"Yeah. It's a long story."

"But yeah. Then he was gone. Frank got the door open after a while, and all of his things were still there, but he was just…gone. Like he'd run off or something." She frowned. "Left me with a really creepy feeling. It didn't seem like him...it almost felt as if something had got him. You know?"

"Yeah." _I know. Have to get her mind off of that, though._ "He was doing an investigation. About a religious cult, and a man named Walter Sullivan."

"Walter...Sullivan. Wasn't he a serial killer or something, years ago?"

"Yeah. But here's the thing. I got a letter from him...from Joseph."

She looked at me really strangely then. "How could you? He's...he's probably dead, right?"

"I don't know. But I've been getting these notes from him, these red notes, all day. Pages out of his diary, shoved under my door. They've been telling me things, passing on information. He told me to go down...down into the deepest part of him...and to look for the ultimate Truth."

Another skeptical look.

"Let's do that," I said firmly. "There must be something down there." I almost sounded as if I meant it. Heck, if I kept this up I might even convince myself that it was a good idea.

She took a few seconds to think about this.

"Okay. I'll do it."

I didn't believe my ears. Then I understood.

_She's not stupid. She knows that I'm bullshitting right now, that that's all I've got. She has no idea how bad it is out there, but she's figured out that this is way, way beyond anything that either of us has ever dealt with. She realizes just as well as I do that we're both probably pretty screwed by now...but we still have to do __**something**__. Anything._

"You're the only chance I've got," she said with a shrug. "I'll stick with you."

_She knows it's bad. Really bad. I just hope that sticking with me doesn't get her killed._

* * *

Where to go next? The only change from when I'd initially found myself there was that the elevator was now up on the second floor. This left a big gaping hole where the elevator had been, and a gate on the other side. 

The halls were silent as the tomb. The silence was only broken by the sound of our footsteps, first the usual thuds (me) and clicks (Eileen) as we walked along the hallway, then a sickening squashing sound as we crossed the elevator machinery and found our feet sinking into the rotting bodies that lay crushed and mangled in the gears. To Eileen's credit, she didn't say anything, just blanched a little and stepped carefully through to keep from falling in.

The gate was locked. I rummaged in my pocket and said a quiet "thanks" to Joseph for the key.

"He gave you that?"

"Yeah. Slid it under my door."

"Saint Joseph," Eileen muttered. "Patron saint against uncertainty and hesitation, if I remember correctly."

"Really?"

"Yeah. Anti-Communist, too. Not that that matters much any more. And...patron saint of a happy death."

The key slid into the lock, and the gate swung open.

Beyond was a long, long staircase heading downward. There was a door at the other end, but between here and there...yeah. You guessed it. Three of 'em, this time, all coming up the stairs in the distance. There was no way that we were getting out of here without a fight.

Deep breath. Axe up. Grip tight...taking on three was going to be tough, but if I could time them, I could take it down to two at a time...two on one wasn't bad...

_Two on two._ Eileen was standing next to me, with her handbag gripped tightly in her good fist, eye wide and glaring.

"What are we waiting for?" she asked.

_Has she gone nuts?_

"What are you _thinking?_ I can't protect you out there."

"Henry, I've got to help somehow."

"With _what_?" I hissed. The things were getting closer, and we didn't have much time to sort this out. "Smacking them around with a purse isn't going to do anything except piss them off."

_You're being kind of harsh, aren't you?_

"I'll be backup, then. Don't worry, I'll stay out of your way." She saw my frown. "Let me help. Please. I have to do _something_."

"I'll do what I can to protect you, but..."

"I know."

And then they were there, and I went to work.

It took a long, long time. Not that there were three of them, although that didn't help. The problem was that I'd hit one, and it would fall after a while, like before, but before I could get in another smack or a stomp, the thing would slide down the stairs, bumping and burping all the way down like a huge rotting androgynous whoopie cushion. So, eventually, after it hit bottom, it would get up and I'd have to start the whole process again. I ended up just swinging left and right as fast as I could, moving down the stairs when I could, checking on Eileen when I could. It was a hard, hard slog. Our progress was steady, but so slow.

At one point, I took a few-second breather as one approached, and used the time to get a good look at the enemy. Until that moment, I hadn't bothered. I took in its long hair, breasts, wide hips and masculine shoulders. Just like all the others. The gray arms were well-muscled and strong, and threatened to break my bones just as they'd done before. The thing was like a parody of a woman...almost like a really, really bad cross-dresser or something. It would have been funny if it wasn't so damn lethal.

_I met her in a club down in Old Soho  
Where you drink champagne and it tastes just like cherry cola...  
C-O-L-A, cola..._

The song bubbled up from memory unbidden, and I had to laugh at myself a little. At least it gave me something else to think about…and it gave me a rhythm as I swung the axe and tried not to fall down the stairs.

_Well, I'm not the world's most physical guy,  
But when she squeezed me tight, she nearly broke my spine,  
Oh my Lola, lo lo lo Lola…_

A groove, even. I needed one if I was going to make it all the way down like this.

_Well, I'm not dumb but I can't understand  
Why she walks like a woman, and talks like a man, oh my Lola..._

But I'd never heard them talk. Didn't know if they could. Although that was a very masculine-sounding burp they had, right...a real beer-and-pretzels rolling belch. Maybe that was why their bellies were so big…really, really bad gas…and these things probably could break your back. Well, dead things did often swell up from gas…better that they burp than…

The end of a pipe swished through the air inches from my nose.

_Dammit. You're zoning out. Pay attention, Henry, or you're going to get both of you killed._

Left…right…left…right…

_I pushed her away…_ (whack, whack)  
_I walked to the door…_(whack, crunch)  
_I fell to the floor..._ (burp, burp, burp…)  
_I got down on my knees…_ (deep breath)  
_Then I looked at her and she at me…_(Eileen, OK. Good.)

We were nearly at the bottom by now, and I was in the zone. A good thing, too, since all three of them were homing in on us now. Swing...swing...

One of their pipes connected with my ribs, and I swore and swung harder.

_Well I'm not the world's most masculine man,  
But I know what I am, and that I'm a man, and so is Lola..._

(Yeah, I'm not the chest-pounding type, but still... he was wrong about me.)

_Lo lo lo Lola...Lo lo lo Lola...bum bum bum bum, bum..._

And then we were standing at the bottom, looking back up the long flight of stairs, with our backs to the door and three large gray bodies bleeding out at our feet. I have absolutely no idea how long it really had taken us to get down those stairs. Eileen was breathing hard, and I was gasping for air too. We stared at each other for a few seconds before I felt shooting pain down my right side and wetness on my skin.

"You're...bleeding..." she breathed. Her eye moved down to my shirt, and she went white. "Oh my God. It's..."

I looked down. There was blood there, soaking through my shirt and running down my thigh. Felt like a broken rib or something like that...but I shouldn't be bleeding. Something must have broken the skin, too. The pain was sharp, and getting sharper. Then, I saw the slight pointed bump under my shirt and knew that this was serious.

"Jesus, Henry...oh my God..."

"Hang on," I said. I tried to move my arm on that side, but it hurt too damn much...and reaching across with my other arm wasn't any good, either. My whole side was on fire, and if I hadn't been dead tired for days already I probably would have been screaming. I gritted my teeth.

"There's a bottle…in my right back pocket..."

Her fingers wriggled in the pocket for a moment, then she drew out the brown bottle. She opened it and handed it to me, and I was about to chug it when I looked at her.

"Are you hurt? Did they..."

"Don't worry about me. You take it."

"Sure?"

"Yeah. Catch me later, right?"

The last two-thirds of the bottle was just enough to fix me up, and I was able to move now. The bump had gone, but there was still some soreness.

Eileen's eye was enormous.

"Did you just..."

"Yeah. This stuff tastes like sludge," I said as I handed her the bottle, "but it's worth it."

"_That's_ an understatement." She turned the bottle around in front of her face.

"When I go back to my place I'll grab some for you."

"Thanks. I'm…I'm glad it works."

"So am I."

"Oh, and Henry?"

"Yeah?"

"Uh...the song was nice, but don't give up your day job."

_What? Wait...was I...oh...oh __**man...**_

I guess my face must have been nearly as red as the blood on my shirt just then, because she took pity on me.

"Don't worry. It was kind of funny, actually. And who am I going to tell?"

* * *

There was red writing by the door. It was hard to read, but after a few moments it became clear. 

_EVER DOWNWARD_

"Looks like we're on the right track," Eileen said hopefully.

"Nowhere else to go," I said. "After you."

The door swung open, and we left the hospital forever.

* * *

**A/N: The song is, of course, "Lola" by the Kinks.**


	18. South Ashfield Station Again 1

We were outside the door now, facing …fog. More fog than I'd ever seen before. Sometimes, when I was visiting that house by the lake with Mom, there would be a little morning mist on the water and clouds that would roll in over the hills, but nothing like _this_. It was gray and dry, and you couldn't see the sun. Still, I knew that we were outside. We had to be. There was no way that the hollow noises coming from around us wouldn't echo back, not even in this fog, unless there were no walls…so we were outside.

In front of us stretched the beginnings of a long, open spiral staircase. It curved down counterclockwise from where we were standing. The door behind us was mounted in a wall that hovered in midair, just like everything else we could see.

"Ever downward," I said.

"Don't go too fast," Eileen said, a touch of fear creeping into her voice. "Don't leave me behind."

"I won't."

The steps were metal, and were covered in blood and something else damp. So, down we went with a _squish squish squish_. Eileen was able to hobble along more quickly than I'd expected, but even then it took a while. The blood and whatever were slippery, and there was no handrail for a lot of it, so we had to be very careful. As we moved, strange gray figures appeared off to the sides, swinging in the air or locked in cages in freakish _tableaux_ or in pieces, lying on the ground. Scenes from a nightmare. What, did he hate _spiral stairs_, too?

In the fog, it was hard to tell how far we'd traveled. When the path forked off to the left after a while, I guessed we'd been around two or three times. I didn't really know.

Eileen peered into the fog. "See anything?"

"Yeah." Red letters and a round blackness…hanging suspended over nothing, just like the door that had brought us here. "A Hole. I have to go back, Eileen. I'm sorry."

"It's OK. There's nothing here, it looks like. And, I wouldn't mind stopping for a little. This bag is pretty heavy." She grinned at me. "Guess I'll wait here."

* * *

The apartment was no longer silent. Something was ticking. It sounded like the clock in my front room, the one that had stopped a while back. Sure enough, it was…but the hands were spinning around madly, even as the rhythmic ticking sound continued. For whatever reason, the clock that hadn't worked in days was now making up for lost time or something. 

Well, it was irritating, and I decided to put an end to it. I reached for the clock to pull out its battery, but just as my fingers touched its wood case I felt that blinding pain slam into my skull again. The room was red, too, just as it had been with the ghosts and the wheelchairs. I staggered back more in shock than in pain.

_What the hell! I can't believe this. Is the clock haunted now, too? But how? Nothing has come in here before…_

_No, that's not true. This room hasn't been right for days. And then there were the holes, and the wall moving, and…it's more of the same, but getting worse. A lot worse. The lines are blurring, the lines between here and there._

I felt that sense of safety at home, that feeling of security, slipping away. Ever since I'd moved in, this place had been my refuge from everything, _everything. _Even before things started going wrong, my room had been there for me no matter what. That was no longer the case. I wasn't safe here any more, not if there was more of this coming…and given the way things had been going so far today, it seemed inevitable. I'd taken it for granted, and it wasn't until that moment that I realized just how important it had been to me.

If I wasn't safe here, I wasn't safe anywhere. _Anywhere._

And neither was Eileen. I didn't have time to waste staring at a haunted clock, feeling sorry for myself. I grabbed a drink from the chest and headed back through the Hole.

* * *

"It's weird, Henry. Like you just appear out of thin air." 

She was still standing there, with her weight on her good foot and a tired smile on her face. I was sitting on the metal in front of the Hole, staring at those silly little purple heels of hers. There was no way that those weren't hurting her feet.

"You need better shoes," I said. "I'll go back and get some."

"Wait a minute." Her eyes moved to my black boots. "Your feet are a lot larger than mine. I probably couldn't walk in any of your shoes. Unless you've somehow got a pair of women's size seven sneakers back at your place." She winked at me. "And if you do, grab some sweats in my size while you're at it. I like 'em baggy."

"I don't wear your size."

"I didn't say they had to be _yours_."

I leaned back against the wall under the Hole, stretched my legs out, crossed my arms and feigned annoyance. "What makes you think that I'd have somebody else's sweats just lying around?"

"Nothing," she said with a look of mock-innocence on her face. "Just tweaking you. I'm sorry. Anyway, I'm fine. Don't worry about me."

"Speaking of which, try some of this," I said, handing her the bottle. She opened it and had a few sips. I sat and waited.

"Tastes awful."

"Yeah. Feel better?"

"No."

_No?_

"Not even a little?"

"No."

"Have another drink."

Sip.

"Not a damn thing. Guess it doesn't work on me." She handed the bottle back.

_Crap. That should have been enough to at least fix her ankle…I can't even help her that way…_

She saw the expression on my face, and crouched down to smile at me. "It's OK, Henry, it really is. I'm not getting any worse, not yet. Let's save this for you. You're the one on the front lines, anyway. You're going to need it more than I will."

Why was I still sitting around on my butt, anyway? I got to my feet as quickly as I could, helping her up as I rose. What she said was true, but still...

"You watch yourself. The minute you feel any worse, you let me know, OK?"

"OK."

* * *

Another turn around the spiral, and we were at another door, which was also floating in midair in a torn section of wall. It had that same round red symbol on it. 

"What is this?" Eileen asked, as she examined the symbol.

"I don't know. But it's the same as on other doors I've seen today…and the same as the red letters around the Holes. It must mean something."

The runes around the hole were tickling something in the back of my brain.

_I should know what this is...but I don't. I..._

_That's stupid. Why would I know what this means, anyway? I've never seen it before today. Probably some cult thing._

She peered at the letters. "They're European runes, or something like them. I learned a little about them in college."

"Seriously?"

"Yeah. I majored in archaeology."

"Can you read them?"

"No. Wish I'd paid more attention in _that_ class."

The door opened readily. Beyond was a small gray room filled with small round pipes. A walkway with a metal floor zigzagged between the pipes across the room. This was starting to look familiar…

At the other end of the short walkway was a door with a notice board on the right and a shelf on the left. As I peered at the notices, Eileen moved to the shelf and picked up something.

"Why would anybody leave this here? Wherever this is."

She handed it to me. It was a single white candle, with a red emblem near its base, just like the one I'd found in the hospital. But we weren't in the hospital any more…and the memos were familiar looking. Suspiciously so. Where…

…_no. HELL no. It can't be…_

I'd know for sure where we were as soon as we went through that door, but I had a pretty good idea already.

_I just hope that I'm wrong…_

Yep. Long hall, gray walls, and metal scaffolding. At first, my brain refused to believe what my eyes were telling it. It was impossible. Couldn't be. But after a few seconds, it finally sank in. I didn't know whether to laugh or curse. I ended up doing neither.

"This looks like…South Ashfield Station," Eileen said by my side.

_Oh, it is, it is. But not like you've seen it before._

We were back in the goddamn subway.

* * *

One of those ape things was galloping down the hallway toward us. I dropped the axe and grabbed the stun gun from my belt, and as it stood up on its legs and started to amble toward me, I stepped forward and slammed the gun into its chest. At least this one went limp immediately, just like the ones back in the building area had. Good. The axe would have done the job more efficiently, but I had to know. 

Eileen was standing protectively by the axe. She handed it to me.

"Nice," she said. "That thing dropped like a rock."

"Thanks. If you don't get them quickly, they're a lot of trouble."

"You've run into these before?"

"Yeah. A few hours ago."

"How long _have _you been…doing this, anyway?"

I thought about that one. "Almost all day. It's night now back in the real world."

We'd re-entered the subway through that locked door by the long escalator I'd ridden down so long ago. There were two more apes, down by the escalator. The old bait-and-date plan worked just as well as it had before, and they didn't pose a big problem once I had them one-on-one.

"Let's go down there," I said, pointing down the corridor toward the turnstiles. "The bathrooms are safe...or at least they used to be."

"So you've been here before, today?" Eileen asked.

"Yeah."

"Why are we back now?"

"No idea. It doesn't look like much has changed."

"Where's the exit?"

"That's the thing. Last time, there wasn't one."

"So how'd you get out?"

"I…" I didn't want to mention Cynthia. Not yet. It would just worry Eileen…and what good would it do, anyway? "I just woke up back at my place, and when I went back through the Hole, I ended up somewhere different."

"But I can't do that. How am I going to get out of here?"

"We'll find a way. Somehow."

* * *

That way could be anywhere. I had no idea where to start looking, but I knew that I had to search everywhere. The bathrooms seemed like a good place to start. 

"You head into the women's room. I'll check out the men's and meet you there. There's a Hole in there, and I have to grab a couple of things."

"No. I'm coming with you."

I stopped and turned to look at her. Her jaw was set.

"I don't want to be left alone, Henry. It's…it's bad for me."

I searched her good eye. It was green, like mine, but what I saw in it told me that she was absolutely terrified of being by herself.

"OK. But that means more walking."

"I'll deal."

The men's room had nothing of interest except for a single nutrition drink sitting on the floor inside one of the stalls. Eileen peered around curiously.

"Always wondered what one looked like."

"What?"

"A men's bathroom."

"Never saw one on TV or anything?"

"You know, I never have."

I smiled. "Sorry it's not more exciting."

"Nah, it's pretty much what I expected."

"Well, now you know. Guess this place isn't _all_ bad."

She laughed again. "No, guess not. At least there's _some _educational value."

"Right."

"While we're here, do you…uh…?"

I stared at her for a moment until I realized what she was getting at.

"No, I don't, but thanks for asking."

"No problem."

"Anyway, I have home. You know."

Actually, I didn't, given the state of my toilet, but I hadn't had to in days…hadn't been hungry, either. Whatever. I didn't have it in me to explain it all to her just then, and it wasn't really important anyway.

The women's bathroom still had the Hole from before, but Cynthia's doppelganger was gone. Just as well, I thought, since it would have raised a lot of questions that I didn't know how to answer just yet. It also had ten or so slugs oozing around on the floor. I stomped them out of existence, one at a time, as Eileen watched.

"That is thoroughly gross," she said as a large one splashed all over my leg.

"Yeah," I said. "Before, I could just go home –" – _splat – _ "– and clean up, but now...not really." _Splat_.

"What do you mean? I thought your place…"

"It used to." _Splat_. That was the last one. "But now it doesn't. Not any more." I weighed the brown bottle in my hand. "We're going to have to be careful with these. I don't have a lot of them."

She nodded.

"I'll be back as quickly as I can. You going to be OK?"

"Yeah. I'll be OK."

"Uh…Eileen?"

"Yeah?"

"Uh…if you…you know. If _you_ have to…"

"Now's the time. I know. We won't be pulling over again for a while."

"Probably not."

* * *

I had this feeling that we were going to have to go through the whole goddamn subway station again, every last foot of corridor and stairs and train track, looking in every nook and cranny to find the way out. So, I was probably going to need those subway tokens again to get down onto the platforms. 

There was a loud _thwack, thwack_ coming from the front room. The clock was still spinning around madly, and now the windows were slamming themselves up and down. Would have been nice if they'd opened enough to let me out, but one look at them told me that if I tried anything I'd be lucky to get away only missing a finger or two.

Joseph – or somebody – had left me an envelope and a note. The envelope held a rounded plastic key, like a kid's toy key, with a scrawled note in a familiar childish hand.

_Mommy, I'll giv you this so pleez wake up soon.  
It's inside my toy train._

The note was another diary entry, of course.

_I've found two mysterious and powerful artifacts that seem to be very effective for evading the ghost-victims:  
the Holy Candle and the Saint Medallion.  
Not only are they effective against the ghost-victims in the Other World,  
they also seem to prevent them from invading my room.  
Just light the candle near where they're coming in and its holy power is activated.  
The Saint Medallion seems to repel unholy energy when it's worn.  
I'm starting to gain some hope._

_July 25_

I shook my head. Joseph's hope had been misplaced, in the end.

Still, once again, the logic wasn't hard. Clock-headache equals window-headache equals ghost-headache. Therefore, ghost-repellent might equal haunted-clock repellent which would probably equal haunted-window repellent. It was worth a try. I pulled the candle out of my pocket and dug through the kitchen drawers for a lighter. The worst that would happen would be a big wax spot in the carpet, and getting my deposit on the place back was the least of my concerns. I moved just out of range of the clock and windows, lit the candle and quickly put it on the floor between them, gritting my teeth against the pain. Then, I stepped back out of range and watched and waited.

The candle burned down abnormally quickly. Nothing happened for a few seconds. Then, I saw the hands of the clock begin to slow down, and the windows slowed their slamming and rattling. By the time the candle was three-quarters gone, the clock had stopped again, and the windows were still. The rest of the candle burned down slowly until it was gone. It didn't even leave a stain.

_So that's how it works. But these probably aren't going to be much good against the ghosts…try getting them to stay still for that long. Not happening._

_What was the other thing, though? Some necklace…that's it. A Saint Medallion. Could it be…_

I had two now, the one I'd found in the prison and one I'd picked up off of a table in the hospital. I'd found it in a room with bright light streaming through the window, which seemed very alien in there. The rays played through the dust in the air, like in a movie when the Light of Heaven descends from above and all that. It had felt strangely sacred in the middle of the other hellish rooms. I pulled one of the medallions from the chest and stared at the identical twin faces of the mother and child on the front. Still creepy.

_Why not? Couldn't hurt to try._

I slipped it into my pocket for the time being, fished the tokens out of the bottom of the chest, and headed back.

* * *

Eileen was sitting in one of the stalls when I woke up on the floor of the bathroom. I turned away the moment before I realized that she wasn't…you know. 

Her laughter echoed through the room.

"It's OK, Henry. I was just waiting for you."

She was standing in front of me now, extending a hand to help me up. I took the hand, but lifted myself up anyway. My cheeks were burning. She tilted her head to look me in the eye.

"Honestly, Henry, it's OK. I've never met anyone so embarrassed by this stuff as you. Don't worry about it." The corner of her mouth twitched. "Not much to see when a woman goes, anyway."

I shook my head. "That last part was just mean. You're evil."

_**Joking**__ with a woman you've just met? Since when have you been able to manage that? What has gotten into you? _

"Sorry. It's just too easy. I'll be good."

_Well, __**she's**__ joking with __**you**__, too. Has been for a while. That must be it._

"Ready?" She turned to leave.

"Eileen. There's something you need to know."

She stopped and turned around.

"I have another nutrition drink in my right pocket. That's where I'm going to keep them from now on. If something happens, and I can't get to them…"

"I'll get one out and feed you. Got it."

"Not too much. A little goes a long way." I took a deep breath. "I hope it doesn't come to it, but if it does…at least half a bottle."

She nodded. It hit me then, that I wasn't alone in this any more. For better or for worse.


	19. South Ashfield Station Again 2

The ticket machines were just as old and decrepit as they had been before. As I walked forward slowly, with Eileen a few steps behind me, I heard no noises, no dog-like scufflings or ape-like rumblings. The area seemed deserted. This was more alarming than before...much more. So far today, those noises had become familiar, but quiet had meant danger, danger for which I couldn't brace myself. This place was way too quiet.

Everything was otherwise the same, but for the odd black marks on the ground. There were dozens of thin streaks, several feet long, that trailed around the side of the nearest booth and down the hallway. No, not streaks. Clumps of black thread, maybe, or smears of thick black grease. I couldn't tell, the lights were too dim.

There were the King Street turnstiles. Just like before. The windows of the little office were still spattered with blood, her blood, but it had dripped down a little further than before by now. Her things were still scattered on the ground, too, with little yellow numbers next to them, where they'd been labeled by the police. I still couldn't remember ever seeing a purse in her hand, but there they were. So many broken bottles and cracked containers…and so many little yellow numbers.

_And something else…_

As I squinted past the turnstiles, something moved on the other side. It was too dark to see clearly. At first, all I could see was a river of black flowing across the concrete, inky and shiny. Then, the river moved, and lifted, and I realized that it was hair, long, silky hair. Then, I saw arms and legs, and breasts in a low-cut red shirt…and a striped skirt that showed more thigh than I was comfortable looking at. But the arms and legs were white and veined in purple and blue, and a voice in my head told me that _they didn't look like that before._ But…when? What?

As the figure crawled forward _through_ the turnstile bars (not between them or under them, but _through_ them) I finally realized what I was seeing. I was stunned for a second, just trying to comprehend. Cynthia...this was Cynthia. It couldn't be, but it was. Or, it had been before. A long time before…a lifetime ago. This was once...

…_Cynthia…no…_

The hair hung over her face, hiding her eyes, but I could see her mouth. Her skin was pale and translucent, no longer smooth and golden (_like before_), yet her lips were still red. Her fingernails were broken and chipped, but they were still just as red as when she'd dragged one along my cheek and promised me that favor…a promise she hadn't lived to keep.

…_why…_

Finally, it hit me. She'd never left the subway after all. She was here. Still. Always. Just like the others he'd killed, she would be stuck here forever.

…_oh God. Oh Jesus God. I'm sorry, Cynthia…_

As I stood there, she lifted her head and faced me, and the lips parted. She smiled, and then I could see her teeth, so small and white and even before, now broken and filled with blood. That knocked some sense into me.

_No! This isn't Cynthia. It can't be. This is just..._

She was crying, crying out to me. Her arm reached forward to me, and my world turned red. I staggered.

"…Henry?"

That was Eileen's voice, coming at me from far, far away…and then she was behind me, peering past my shoulder.

"Henry…what is it?"

I couldn't speak, couldn't think, couldn't do anything but stare at her. Were her lips moving? Was she trying to say something?

"Henry!"

That snapped me out of it. I found my tongue.

"A – a ghost. She – it's a ghost."

I thought quickly. I needed to do something about her, fast, before she found out about Eileen. I could outrun ghosts, most of them, anyway, but Eileen didn't stand a chance. I couldn't fend Cynthia off forever. What could I do?

Then I remembered the old sword lying in my chest back at home, and I knew what I needed.

I grabbed Eileen's hand. "Come on. We have to get back to the Hole."

"Why? Henry – "

"No time to explain. Come on."

I pulled her back down the hallway as quickly as I could. As we approached the bathrooms, I looked backward. Cynthia was slithering on her stomach like a snake along the ground, just a few feet behind us. That explained the bundles of black thread…her hair had probably caught on things and been pulled out in clumps.

_Jesus. None of the others could move that fast. I haven't got a choice. I have to take her out for good…I just hope that I can._

…_what has she __**become**__…_

_No. You don't have that kind of time now._

Back in the women's bathroom, I hurried to the Hole.

"I'll be right back. If she comes in here…do whatever you can to get away from her. Get out of here if you have to. I'll find you when I get back. It'll just be a minute."

Eileen still had that confused look on her face. I took her by the shoulders, and she stared at me in surprise.

"Eileen, be careful. She can kill you just by being near you."

Eileen's eye was wide, but she nodded mutely. I threw myself into the Hole.

* * *

My hands were shaking as I pulled the sword out of the chest. But I didn't have time to waste worrying about that, either.

* * *

She was still there when I got back, huddled in one of the stalls. I hauled myself to my feet. 

"You OK?" I asked.

"Yeah," she said, straightening up. "No sign of her."

"Good."

So, it looked as though we might be safe in here for just a little while.

"Henry…tell me. I need to know. What's going on here?"

There was no avoiding it this time. That wasn't my only problem, either. My right hand was on my axe, which was where I had been keeping it more often than not, but my left hand was still shaking. I put it on the end of one of the stall dividers and leaned on it to hide its spasms, and took a deep breath.

This was going to be hard. Very hard.

"Eileen, that was Cynthia. Once."

"Once."

I nodded.

"I met her when I came here, the first time. She was just as lost as I was. Neither of us had any idea what was going on. We tried to find the way out together. But the stairs were blocked, and the trains didn't go anywhere. There was no way out."

Eileen was still standing there in front of me, but she was very pale. I continued.

"I got out, eventually. Cynthia didn't. I think…I think he got her."

There was a lump forming in my throat. This was the first time I'd really thought about it since…everything happened.

"_He_ got her?"

"Yeah. She…"

_Careful, Henry. Don't…_

But I had no choice. I couldn't stop now.

"He got to her. When I wasn't there. She kept disappearing, and I couldn't find her. I looked everywhere, but I couldn't find her."

The look on Eileen's face was calmer than I'd expected. She was listening intently. I could only hope that _I_ didn't look as freaked out as I felt.

"Then, I heard her over the P.A. system, and she said that he was coming to get her. When I found her, in the booth by the turnstiles…it was too late. She died right there, in my arms, Eileen…she was so _terrified_…"

I was babbling. Try as I might, I couldn't shake the memory of her eyes hazing over below me, of her body going limp in my arms as the red life drained out of her and ran across the floor. Then, I knew that I was in trouble. All of the memories were flooding back, unchecked. I couldn't stop the tide. The shock, the horror, the grief…all of it. It was catching up with me, fast.

_Dammit! Stop this! You can't…_

Eileen's calm, slow voice broke through my thoughts.

"That's how you know. About dying here." She paused a moment, thinking. "That ambulance, early this afternoon, and the police around the subway…that was her, wasn't it?"

I tried to speak, but nothing came out. I could only nod. Cynthia…after all that time, you still did that to me.

_No, it wasn't just her. It was all of them, all the ones that I couldn't stop…and it was Eileen, too, just because she __**was.**_

"She's…" Eileen was watching me, now, studying my face. "She's…a ghost? That's what you said? And that's what's going to happen to us if we don't get out of here, right?"

Somehow, when it had been just me, by myself, those realities were easier to ignore. There was always some reason to avoid thinking about it…another monster to kill, another key to find, another doorknob to turn, always something to take my mind off of the really horrifying stuff. I hadn't had time to process what I was seeing, to let it all sink in, and I'd told myself that I'd think about it later. I thought that after my freakout in the prison basement, I'd been able to put it all behind me. But here was Eileen standing in front of me, beaten and barely alive, telling me all of the things that I had tried so hard to forget today. Telling me that she was going to end up just like Cynthia. That was the worst. No. I...that was too much.

I was losing it, fast. This had to stop. I couldn't do this. Not now. Not _ever_. And certainly not in front of _her. _My hand was threatening to slip at any moment, to vibrate itself right off of the stall partition, and then she'd see it, see what a basket case I was, and…

Then I saw her again. Cynthia. She was sitting in the center stall, where her mannequin had been so long ago, still in that skirt and heels and that low-cut top with her hair up and her hand out. It was covered in blood. Her mouth was open, too, just like the mannequin's, and her face was covered with blood and her breast bore the _**16 / 21**_, and she was screaming soundlessly. I let go of the partition and backed away, away from Eileen's confused stare and from that figure that was so alive and real.

Then…_oh God,_ she turned her face to me, and her lips were moving, forming my name, but no sound came out then, either, and then she was turning white and gray and her eyeballs turned black and purple streaks crawled across her skin and her hair floated away from her head and blood welled up from her mouth and ran down her chin and started dripping onto her thigh…

I put my hands over my face and tried to block it all out, but Eileen's gentle hand on my shoulder was the last straw.

"Henry?"

I felt it coming. Days and days of strain and worry, and then the last several hours' worth of...everything. It was all rolling toward me like an avalanche, and I knew that I only had a few seconds before I fell apart completely. I couldn't get away fast enough, and there was nowhere to run anyway, so I turned to the wall and leaned against it and buried my face in my arms so that at least she wouldn't have to see me like this.

In every hell, there are points of light. In every downward spiral, there are little breaks. I don't believe in miracles…they're just human interpretations of fortuitous events, it seems to me. Happy coincidences, nothing more. But that day, I was as close as I've ever been to witnessing one. No, two. Eileen put her good arm around my chest, gently, from the back, and pressed her face into my shoulder blade and _hugged_ me as I stood there. By then, I was shaking so hard that I would have thrown her off if she hadn't pulled me tightly to her and held firmly. That hurt even more, knowing that not only was I _this_ close to completely losing my _shit_ in a women's bathroom in the local subway station in the pits of someone's nightmare, but that she was seeing the whole thing and was trying to do anything she could just to help me feel better. Eileen, who had nearly died herself a few hours before, was trying to take care of _me._ I didn't deserve that, you see, because it was my _fault_ that Cynthia had died, my _fault_ that I hadn't gotten to Eileen in time, and I didn't deserve her kindness. That was what hurt most. And there was no guarantee that what had happened to Cynthia wouldn't happen to Eileen, and it was even more likely because he'd tried once and now she couldn't move or defend herself, and if I couldn't protect Cynthia from him before I'd have no chance of keeping Eileen safe now, none at all…

The second one came when her touch stopped hurting and started soothing me. At first, I couldn't believe it. It shouldn't have, but it did, even though there was a part of me that _wanted_ to feel that agony, to use it to punish myself for what I'd failed to do, but it broke through my stubbornness and ran through my body like wine in my veins. I remembered then, remembered the last time I'd felt like this, over a decade ago, that afternoon I'd spent sitting with my best friend in high school on the porch of his parents' house. I'd never forget it, least of all venting everything at him. I didn't want to lay it all on him like that – it was nothing to do with him, it was _my_ problem, not his – but just like now it had come out of me in a rush, and I ended up telling him everything. I knew that he'd never repeat it to anyone, and as far as I know, he never did.

He sat there for a while, just listening, and then he told me that sooner or later it would get better. He didn't know what he was talking about, of course – at that age, not many people we knew had had to deal with really serious stuff, and he hadn't been one of them – but he'd been right, of course, and after a while it did get better, a little at a time. The same thing was happening here, whether I wanted it to or not. I felt it all ebbing away, and I had no choice but to give up the fight.

I don't know how long we stood there like that, but it seemed like a long time. Minutes passed, and as I attempted to still the tumult in my head she stayed glued to my back and wouldn't let go. But my head wouldn't quiet down, and soon enough I realized that I had to let it run its course or I'd end up like this all over again some time down the road…if I didn't get us killed first, of course. So, I waited, with my head in my arms and Eileen's small body pressed against me, waited for the screaming in my head to end. Just as I knew it would.

And then it was all gone and I was leaning against the wall, drained and numb, with my face and sleeves wet and my nose full of snot, and Eileen leaning into me and leaving her own little spot of moisture on my shirt right above where her cheekbone was pressed into my shoulder blade.

…_Eileen's crying. Now, I've made her cry too. Oh God, what have I done…_

I stayed there for a minute or so, just catching my breath and trying to put myself back together piece by piece. Her weight was light, and her skin was cool, but she was a welcome warmth in the cold little room.

"We don't have time for this," I mumbled into the concrete. Then, I laughed, but it came out as more of a choke. My streak of stupid comments at critical moments was still intact.

"Too late," she replied softly.

Then, she let me go, and that hurt too. I didn't expect to miss it that much. I heard her footsteps walking away from me, and I knew that that was it. She'd had enough. She'd realized that I wasn't going to be able to get both of us out of here. She'd decided to go it alone. That was how little she thought of me…she figured that even limping and half-blind and armed with nothing more than a purse, she'd be better off without my useless butt. I was a sorry case, when it came down to it, and she was right. One hundred percent right. She was going to die, and then I was going to die, and it would all be over for us.

No, it wouldn't. We'd both haunt this place forever, just like Cynthia, moaning and crying in some incomprehensible pain and never seeing daylight again…

I was so lost in my own misery that I didn't hear her come back. She touched my shoulder, and I jumped and spun away, revealing myself in all of my swollen-eyed and drippy glory. She smiled up at me and lifted something in her hand, and before I knew what was going on she was mopping my face with a damp paper towel. I stood there, frozen, as she wiped and patted and smoothed, and then she handed me the towel.

"Blow," she said softly.

She didn't even flinch as I brought it to my nose and blew hard, but held out her hand for the very-used towel and took it to the trash. I just stood there, wishing that I could curl up and disappear.

I ended up staring at the utterly fascinating slug guts on the floor. She stood in front of me and waited quietly. That's the thing about Eileen, I found out. She's the most patient person you'll ever meet in that kind of situation. She'd probably have stood there for days if that's what it took.

"Any better?" she asked after a while. I couldn't really deny it, but I didn't know what to say. I nodded. At least I wasn't seeing things any more. The stalls were empty again.

"You've been going through this all day. It's about time it caught up with you. Can't hold it back forever."

"That's the problem," I muttered. "I don't have time to…we have to get out of here. I'll have time to think about it if we ever make it out of this mess. Not now."

_Don't want to talk. Don't want to think. Just want __**out.**_

Damn her for not dropping the subject.

"But you do have to think, don't you? We both do, to figure out what's going on. If it was keeping you from thinking clearly, then it's a good thing that you've gotten it out of your system. For now, anyway."

And damn her for being right.

"The sinks work, right?" I asked. She nodded. I went over to one and splashed some cold water on my face, then bent my head backward and let it drip down my neck and off of my chin. It cooled my swollen face and cleared my head. It was over now. And now, I was more level-headed than I'd been in hours…and numb. I was completely wrung out. I deliberately thought about Cynthia again to test myself, ran images of her death through my head, but this time I couldn't feel anything at all. No fear or guilt or worry or anything. Just numbness.

That was a huge relief.

"Ready?" Eileen smiled at me again, and squeezed my hand.

Deep breath.

"Yeah."

I squeezed back, pulled my hand away and gripped the axe with it. The shaking had stopped. I was ready.

"Let's do this."

* * *

It was time to see if this Saint Medallion was all that it was cracked up to be. I hung it around my neck and dropped it into my shirt, and checked the sword hanging off of my belt loop. I was as ready as I was ever going to be. We carefully made our way back to the turnstiles. 

Cynthia was back by the little info tables between the King Street and Lynch Street turnstiles, hovering over one of the books as if reading it. Guess there wasn't much else for her to do. She turned as I approached with my axe pulled back, and smiled her broken, bloody grin at me. Time to rock and roll.

I swung at her hard, and hit her hard in the chest, right by the numbers. She gurgled and sagged back but didn't fall. Wouldn't fall. _Couldn't_ fall, right? At least not from one puny swing of an axe. She was a goddamn ghost.

_Remember that, Henry. She's a thing now. Not that woman that promised you a favor just down the hall from here…you'll never see those amber eyes again. They're gone. She's gone. She's a __**thing **__now, a thing that's trying to kill you and Eileen._

And as I watched her sag, I realized that my world was still gray and that my head didn't hurt. The medallion did seem to be doing the job. Good. One less thing I had to worry about.

I must have not paid attention for a moment, for now I was staring at Cynthia's hand coming toward me. Before I could lift the axe, her arm plunged into my chest, and she grabbed onto something deep inside and shook me back and forth like a rag doll. I was too astonished to do anything but struggle weakly and watch my blood spray everything around us in sheets…it was so red and bright…

_Click-clack_ behind me, and the purple satin purse came down through the air and smacked Cynthia right on the head. She let go of me in surprise, and I backed away, breathing hard, pushing Eileen back with me. I made sure that she was well out of the way before I raised the axe again…and off Cynthia went, slithering along the floor, faster than I could run. I chased her around for several seconds before she stood up against a wall and leaned toward me, smiling her little smile.

This time, it was her hair that came shooting forward, like long black seaweed, but I managed to sidestep it and planted the axe in her neck. She clutched at the handle, gurgling wetly, but I pulled it out of her and started hacking at her legs and arms. After a while, she started to fall, and I knew that I had to act quickly before she decided to do her snake impression again.

I pulled the sword from my belt and gripped it in both hands. It flashed white as I thrust it downward, into her back and down into the floor. She spasmed and screamed an otherworldly howl, and then lay still. The sword seemed to have come to life, throbbing and glowing in the shadows of the back corner.

Eileen had found her way over and was standing next to me, staring at Cynthia's pinned body just as I was. I had to say _something_…_let's not make it stupid this time, OK?_

"Nice work with the bag. Maybe I underestimated it."

_That wasn't bad._

She smiled and swung it through the air. "That's part of why it's so heavy," she replied. "Not only do I carry a lot of stuff, but I can also smack anybody who tries anything."

"Good idea. Gotta be careful out there, right?"

_And __**that**__ was pretty stupid._

"Right." She watched the sword pulsate for a moment. "Are you going to leave her there?"

"Might as well," I said. "There are supposed to be five of these swords out there in total. One is here, and another one was in use back in the buildings. So, there are still three somewhere. I have a feeling that we're going to be finding them, one way or another."

"What if we don't? I mean, can you leave her there for now and get the sword back when we're done?"

"I don't know if we'll get the chance," I replied. "And, even if we don't find any more, she's enough of a pain that I won't mind having her out of the way. Other ghosts have shown up in more than one place, so she might do the same. If I let her go now, we might have to do this all over again later."

I was still numb from before. That had to have helped a lot. The blood on my shirt had soaked through to my skin, and I didn't dare look to see what she'd done to my chest. I took a good swig of health mud and rested against the wall for a moment.

"You going to be OK?"

"Yeah," I said, pushing myself back up. I wasn't yet, but I was in good enough shape to keep going for now. "Let's see what's up those stairs at the other end."

Cynthia's frustrated burbles followed us down the corridor.


	20. South Ashfield Station Again 3

The hallway was the same. Same thumping worm-like thing, same scaffolding, but instead of two dogs there were three apes. Same stun-gun thing, too. Won't bore you with the details.

The stairs were still blocked, but halfway up on one side was a small glittering object. Eileen waited at the bottom of the steps as I picked it up.

"What's that?"

I peered at it. "It's a bullet. About the same size as the ones in my gun, but made of something different…I think."

"You have a _gun?_"

"Yeah, a pistol, but it only holds ten shots. I can't carry around a lot of ammo, so I only use it when I have to. Doesn't do much against the ghosts."

She bent over my hand. "That looks almost like silver, Henry. What the hell." She started to laugh. "A silver bullet. Just like in the Lone Ranger movies. Guess I'm stuck being Tonto here."

I had to laugh, too. If she didn't seem to mind my stupid comments, I certainly didn't mind hers.

"Yeah. But, what's the point of a _silver_ bullet? I mean, what special purpose…" I trailed off as it dawned on me.

_Why would somebody bother to make a bullet out of silver? Unless it's good against something that regular bullets don't work against..._

We stared at each other for a second or two.

"Let's save that one," Eileen said quietly.

"Yeah."

* * *

The tokens got us through the turnstile as before, and as we headed downward I braced for another ghost ambush. It never came, though, and we made it to the wall at the bottom unmolested. 

There was a small side passage here, off to the left by the rubble, that I hadn't had a chance to check out last time through, because of that same ghost ambush. Snuffling noises told me that four-legged resistance was just past the door, but it and its friend went down easily.

Eileen stared.

"Hellhounds," I said.

She nodded.

Nearly hidden among all of the random debris was a small chair with its back against a wall, with a strange-looking doll or mannequin in it. Another sat on the floor next to it, staring at nothing. They were faceless and armless, and sat there as if abandoned by some huge toddler. Across the lap of the one in the chair were a book that was too faded to read and a long, narrow shaft of braided leather with a loop at one end. It was a riding crop. God only knew how it had gotten there. I had better weapons at hand, much better, but…

"All yours," I said, handing it over. Eileen weighed it in her hand. Then she slid her hand through its strap, walked over to one of the mangy corpses, lifted her good arm high, and brought the riding crop down onto the dog's flank. A long red weal appeared.

"Now that's more like it," she said with a gleam in her eye.

* * *

We were down by the Lynch Street trains. A train door was still open in front of us, the one through which Cynthia and I had fled the ghosts, but now all was quiet. I took a minute to check my map as we walked down the platform. 

"The door at the end should be open," I said. "We can get through there."

"Can we get through the trains to the other side?"

"Yeah. That's what we had to do originally."

"We?"

"Cynthia and I."

"Oh. Right."

"We had to go back and forth through all of them. It was a pain. But it was the only way then…"

"What's that?"

She was pointing through one of the windows of the train. I peeked over her to see. I'd forgotten about the brightly colored toy box sitting on the seat of one of the trains…completely forgotten about it. It had been locked the first time through, so it hadn't been of any use.

Locked then. But now? Now, there was a key in my pocket, a little plastic key. _It's inside my toy train…_

"Let's find out."

The box was big, but surprisingly lightweight. On one end, it had a big W scratched into the plastic. The key turned with a hollow _click_ in the lock, and the lid popped open to reveal…

"There's something in there."

Eileen reached in and pulled out a small, flat object. It was like a coin or a token, but not like anything I'd seen before. It was grimy with years of crusted dirt. There was some sort of marking underneath all the grime, but I couldn't make it out.

"Ugh. Sure is dirty. Here, Henry, you take it."

We left the empty box where we'd found it and headed down to the other open door. The door on the other side of the train was open, and we crossed into the second train. That was a dead end, but the medallion in the middle of the floor was well worth the side trip.

That left the door at the other end of the platform, the one that I'd unlocked before just in case of something that I didn't anticipate happening. Like this, as it turned out. Thank God I had been paranoid. We'd be able to get to the other side much more quickly this way.

The room was still red as I remembered, and the ladder stretched downward. I pocketed the candle at my feet and started down the ladder.

"Henry…"

Eileen was standing there helplessly. Then, it dawned on me. I knew what she was going to say before she said it.

"Look at me. I can't use a ladder with my arm like this." She was frustrated.

"Sure you can. One step at a time, one arm…"

"One leg and one arm. It's not going to work…I can't trust my ankle enough for this."

_Damn._

"OK. Stay here for now. I'll be back in a couple of minutes." _I hope._

"Isn't there another way?"

"Not that I know of. This platform is a dead end…we won't end up anywhere. We're probably going to have to get to the King Street line sooner or later, and the only way there is through the turnstiles. And we don't have any way of getting through them. Until I find a way around, we can't go any further."

I really didn't have any idea what I was talking about, to be honest. I had no better idea of what was going on than she did. But, as I hung there on the ladder, I did a quick mental inventory of the place as I'd seen it last…were there any places that looked interesting that I hadn't been able to get to? No, not that I could remember…Lynch Street…King Street…

_Wait. Wasn't there a light far down the tunnel of one of the King Street trains? Maybe…_

It was the best lead I had, and for now it would have to do.

"Promise. I'll be right back," I said, and hurried down the ladder. I felt terrible about having to leave her there, but for now I didn't have a choice.

The other platform was almost abandoned but for two dogs. There was some useful stuff, but no exit. Just another dead end. So, I headed through the Hole that was still in the red room on that side. Time to go back and see if Joseph had any words of wisdom for me.

* * *

Nothing immediately relevant. Just something about a long-haired man in a coat hanging around Room 302. Walter had been lurking, around here...just after he'd killed himself. Naturally. I'd think about it later, once Eileen and I were back together and I didn't have to worry about hurrying as much. 

The coin in my pocket rattled as I walked to the chest. I'd forgotten about it after climbing down that ladder, so I pulled it out of my pocket and looked at it more closely. The symbol was like some little kid's version of a $ sign, written in red, but I felt like I'd seen it before.

_That's it. On that vending machine by the stairs on the Lynch Street platform. That would mean that it has to go into the vending machine, right? But…it's very dirty…it's hard enough to get vending machines to work with __**real**__ money sometimes, never mind something like this._

The water in the sink was still working, and the dirt swished down the drain. The clean coin went back in my pocket, the half-empty drink went down my throat, the ache in my chest went the way of all things, another bottle went into my pocket, and I went back through the Hole.

* * *

I poked my head back up into the first red room. Eileen was sitting on the floor staring at the walls, but started and nearly fell over when I appeared. 

"You OK?"

"Yeah," she said. "Jumpy, I guess, but OK. Find anything?"

"Not yet. But I'm not done. Just hang in there for a few more minutes. OK?"

"Guess I don't have a choice, right?"

"Not really."

"OK."

Down the ladder. Past the old man ghost swiping at me (but not without bagging the brown bottle sitting on the floor). Down the stairs. The King Street platform was more or less quiet, but for a floating annoyance or two.

There it was…the train by the Hole. Still in the same place, and empty. One of the doors was open on the opposite side, but it led to nothing but tunnel wall. I ran forward to the control room, but it was empty, too. There were lots of controls on the console, but no visible way of moving the train forward to the lighted side tunnel that beckoned so invitingly up ahead. Just dials and knobs and a weird square projection that looked like the shaft of a knob without a handle, or like a lever without a handle.

_I don't know a damn thing about subway trains…but it sure looks as though something's missing here. A shaft without a handle, huh?_

The escalators were still running. I dodged the old man with the hole in his head again and headed up before I remembered the last time I'd been up there. Before I did remember, it was too late, and I was facing a torso and long arms that swung at me in a too-familiar way. This time, though, it was me and my axe friend against these guys, and a good swing or two for each was enough to take 'em down. That, and careful timing, got me up the escalator with only a few bruises. At the top of the escalator, I took out a dog, picked up a drink, and headed up the stairs to the King Street turnstiles.

I could see Cynthia's things up close now, like before. But that was nothing new. The bright blobs of spilled makeup from before had soaked into the concrete and darkened as they dried. The door to the ticket office was locked (again, nothing new there), but there was something I hadn't noticed before on the ground by the door…something bright and yellow, a different bright yellow from the numbered police markers everywhere. I recognized it immediately, and my heart leapt as I picked it up.

_A commuter ticket. Good in any turnstile…including the ones here for the King Street Line. That's how I can get both of us out of here! All I have to do is go down through the Lynch Street entrance again, get Eileen, and bring her back up that way. I can get her through these turnstiles, and down the stairs to the escalator and then to the train…_

But what then? I still couldn't move the train. Maybe she was better off staying where she was for now, until I figured that part out. Well, I'd promised her that I'd be back in a few minutes, so I owed it to her to check on her and see if she could hang out for a little while longer.

As soon as I opened the door to the little red room, I knew that that wasn't an option. Eileen was huddled in a corner, crying her eyes out. She didn't throw herself at me as she had in the hospital, just looked up at me and turned away. She seemed almost embarrassed to be caught like that.

_As if I'd think any less of her for crying after that performance of mine in the women's room. Eileen…_

I crouched down by her side and put an arm around her. She didn't shrink away, but curled toward me and leaned her face into my shoulder. She was shaking.

"I'm sorry," she said in a small voice through her tears.

I put my arms around her and squeezed gently. "It's OK," I said. "It's OK." The shaking slowed, then stopped.

"I…I thought…"

I waited.

"I thought you weren't coming back." It came out as a whisper.

She must have heard my jaw hit the floor, because she looked up suddenly. Even in the red light, I could see her swollen eyes and cheeks. She'd been like this for a while.

_What have you done? God, Henry, what has she been going through while you were out there running around? Stuck here, cornered, frightened and unable to move? She was a sitting duck, and she knew it._

I took her firmly by the shoulders and fixed her eye with mine. "Eileen, I'm not going to leave you behind. Never. I'm always coming back."

_Sniff. _"Promise?"

"I promise. I don't like leaving you here any more than you do, but I had to do it."

"I know."

I smiled as confidently as I could. "Guess what. I think I have an idea how to get us out of here."

"You…do?"

"Yeah. Through the King Street train. I found a commuter ticket that can get us through the turnstiles. See?"

I handed her the ticket. She turned it over in her hands. On the back was the owner's name in flowing script.

_Cynthia Velasquez_

Flowing, but slightly impatient…just like she had been.

"This was hers." Eileen was looking at me strangely.

"Yeah. It was."

She struggled to get up, and I helped her to her feet. She wasn't very heavy at all. She handed the ticket back. "Let's get out of here."

"You OK?"

She smiled up at me, but the smile didn't reach her eyes.

"I think so."

"We can stay here for a little while if you need to."

"No." She shook her head. "Let's get out of here."

The vending machine was right by the stairs, and I remembered the one loose end in my inventory of stuff. It did have that weird red $ on the front, just like on the coin. I dropped the coin into it with a _clink_, and something tinkled metallically down into the slot. I reached in…

_A key. And I can guess just where this goes._

Up the stairs again, slowly. Through the Out gate, and then through the In on the other side. I fished the key out of my pocket and tried it in the door. It fit. Perfectly. The room beyond was still soaked in blood, but now there were more of those little yellow numbers there, marking whatever it was the police were interested in. And lying on top of the congealing blood was a long dark object with a metal head. I picked it up.

_A handle. With a deep square hole in the end._

Now, I _knew_ that we were on the right track. Down the stairs. There were the escalators.

"Thank God," Eileen said. "I'd forgotten that these were here. At least they're not stairs."

It was then that I realized how difficult this next part was going to be. On the way up, I'd noticed more wall-men on the other side, by the Down escalator. Not as many as on the Up. Problem was, I could have dodged the ones on the Up if I had had to…but Eileen couldn't dodge a damn thing. Which meant that I'd have to take out the ones on the other side, one by one.

"Stay several feet behind me," I said as we stepped onto the escalator. "This is going to be one hell of a long ride."

* * *

And it was. I got hit a couple of times, but it wasn't anything I couldn't handle, and somehow we both made it down in one piece. I took her hand and hurried her into the train, with the ghosts hot on our tails. I let go as we passed by the open door, ran to the control room, and popped the handle onto the bolt. 

"Sit down!" I called back to her.

"What?"

"SIT DOWN!" The ghosts were a few seconds away from coming in through the back of the train, and we didn't have a lot of time.

"OK!" She plopped down into a seat.

"Hang on!" I yelled. I dropped into the driver's chair, wrapped both hands around the handle, and _pulled_. It was stiff, but after a second or two it finally gave way.

The train lurched, and Eileen gasped. She slid and nearly fell, but caught one of the bars in time, and stayed in her seat. After a second, the motion stopped, and a second after that we were standing at the open door looking down the brightly lit side tunnel.

"This looks like it," she said. "Good job."

"Thanks."

There were a few boards bridging the gap between the train and the passage. We stepped carefully across them, and headed down the stairs. Wonder of wonders, not only was there a door…but there was a handy _sword_ leaning casually against the wall in the corner as if it was the most natural thing in the world to find an anti-ghost sword in a subway service tunnel. I slid it through my belt and opened the door.

Beyond lay a narrow hallway. It was dark and quiet, and our footsteps echoed down its length and back to us as we moved along slowly. Everything was still, and for a few seconds I thought we'd found a safe place. But then a bright splash of yellow hair caught my eye.

_Oh shit._

Just at that moment, Eileen screamed, and I knew that she saw him too. He just laughed and raised his gun, and now I was looking straight into it.

"RUN!" I yelled. I barreled full-tilt down the passage, pushing him aside as I ran to the door. It was unlocked, and Eileen wasn't far behind. Just another second or two and we'd be out of here…

_BAM!_

I heard the bullet zing past my head before I felt the sting and the slight wetness on my ear. The bastard had winged me, and there wasn't a whole lot I could do about it. Just as he was raising the gun again, Eileen came up to me, and I yanked the door open and shoved both of us through it before he could fire again.

We were back out on the spiral, safe for the moment.

"He hit you!" She brushed the hair back behind the ear and peered at it.

"Just a scratch." I was more annoyed than hurt, anyway. "If he'd wanted to kill me, he would have. He's just playing with us right now."

_Damn. I shouldn't have said that._

"That's him," she said. "It's the man who attacked me."

I nodded. "Yeah, I know."

"You do?"

"Yeah. You're not the only one. He's the one who killed all the others." I drew a breath and met her eye. "Walter Sullivan."

"Walter Sullivan? The serial killer?"

"Yeah."

"But…he's been dead for ten years!"

"Well, he's not dead any more. He's got some plan or something."

"How…"

"I'm not sure. Some weird ritual, maybe."

"That's insane," she said, shaking her head.

"Yeah. But it's the only possible explanation." My ear was stinging less now, and I felt my annoyance ebbing away. "He's the one who's been putting us through all of this."

"How can he still be alive? That's impossible."

"So are ghosts and undead wall-men."

She thought about this as we both breathed deeply.

"Any idea what he wants?"

"None at all."

"Seems like he wants us dead. Wonder why he doesn't just kill us already and get it over with."

"No idea."

The spiral stretched out in front of us again, gray and bleak. At least we knew what to expect here…and if we didn't end up in the forest again in a little bit, I'd be very surprised.


	21. The forest again 1

This spiral was just like the one before it…bodies, fog, metal stairs. No animals, no ghosts, and no Walter. The Hole was in the same place, too, and this time when I had to leave Eileen behind I knew that she'd be OK.

* * *

Something was screaming.

I stumbled out of bed and down the hallway. There was crying and wailing coming from somewhere out front, and the moment I rounded the corner of the front room I knew just where.

Of all of the things I saw that day and night…all of the creatures and weirdness and horrific twisted torturous _things_, this might have been the most horrible, the most insane. Worse than the double-headed babies, even. I backed up and hit my heel against the ceiling fan and nearly fell over the coffee table, but I could have fallen out of the window for all I knew.

For on the wall over my storage chest, filling the whole space, were tiny little babies, their bodies coming out of the goddamn _wall_. Dozens of them. Gray like the wall, naked, sightless. Their tiny mouths opened and closed, and they were crying weakly like kittens, voices rising and falling and echoing through the otherwise silent room. Each one would rise up and wail for a while, then sink back into the wall to be replaced by others. It was like an ocean full of bouncing bobbing undead haunted babies…a nursery of the damned. It was mesmerizing, watching them…there were little noses and ears and fingers and toes…until it really hit me.

I remember my hands shaking as I lit the candle. It took me two or three tries to get it lit, along with a good deal of cursing, and I eventually managed to place it on the floor in front of the chest…and then they were disappearing, sinking back into the wall. I watched them go, one by one, until there was one left. It looked at me with its sightless eyes, and its lips moved. I strained to hear the words it spoke.

"…thank you..."

_Oh God._

And it was gone…

Give me a minute, will you?

* * *

I understood the plan now. If I was right, we'd be at the forest next, and then there would be another spiral staircase to the prison, then another to the buildings, and then another to the apartment…

And then what?

Well, that was a few hours into the future. We'd deal with that when it came up. I dumped the tokens and the commuter ticket into my chest and checked myself for any other injuries serious enough to merit a sip of brown sludgy goodness. It wasn't until then that I noticed how clean my clothes were. The blood that Cynthia had ripped out of me, the slug guts, the dirt of the subway – all of it was gone. Everything I was wearing was just like new again…even if I wasn't. At least that hadn't changed.

_So I'm still hurt, but at least my clothes are fine. Walter's Hell has instant dry cleaning and mending. Uh…thanks, I guess?_

* * *

Eileen was sitting on the steps with her legs hanging over the edge, slapping her riding crop against the metal railing, when I struggled to my feet.

"You OK?"

She must have seen something in my face. I was probably pale or something. But there was no way in hell that I was going to tell her about the babies, or the clock or the window or any of that stuff. She didn't need to worry about me, and there wasn't anything she could do about it anyway.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Let's get going."

"Where? Do you know?"

"Next should be some forest. There were these bird-bat things there before, and some dogs…it may be worse this time."

"Bird-bats?"

"Yeah. You'll understand when you see them. They're not too bad."

"Think I could take them on with this?"

"Actually, you might be able to. They're fast, but not too fast, and they should go down pretty easily. Just be careful."

"I will. I don't want you having to worry about me."

"I do anyway."

"Thanks. But I wish you didn't have to."

* * *

The door led to the cemetery in the forest. Of course. It was the same locked door I'd noticed when I was there last, on the far wall. The cemetery was the same as before, too…nothing new but for the swarm of bird-bats that rose up from the open coffin. Turned out that Eileen's riding crop was pretty good against them, and working together we took them down in record time.

Eileen looked rather pleased with herself, and I didn't blame her at all.

"What a weird place," she said, looking around. "Dark as hell."

"Yeah. It was this way before, too."

"Any idea where this is?"

"We're by the lake, just outside Silent Hill. The cult's orphanage is just up thataway."

"Cult? You mean, that's all real?"

"As far as I can tell, yeah."

Eileen shook her head. "Wow. I thought that that was all just a rumor."

"You'll get the full tour in a few minutes, believe me."

This time, the torch-lamp in the corner was lit. Orange light flickered over the gravestones and moved in their inscriptions.

"Do you remember that cheesy Halloween haunted house that they used to have by the cemetery across town?" Eileen asked.

"Yeah. The one with the vats of bubbling goo and the seven-foot-tall set of knight's armor, right?"

Eileen laughed. "Yeah. It used to swing a poleaxe at you as you ran down the hall. I'll never forget that."

"Me neither. It scared the hell out of my mom the first time we ever went." She'd sworn she'd never go back, but between me bugging her and Dad insisting that a good scare was good for her, we'd ended up going every year anyway. I think he enjoyed it even more than I did.

"Really? Mine too!"

"They haven't done a haunted house there in years. I kind of miss it."

"Yeah. This makes me think of that…but without the cheese factor. Almost as if...as if that was an imitation, and this is the original."

"I know what you mean."

She hobbled over to one of the tall stone monuments, and squinted at the red letters on them.

"This is weird," she said. "It's...like something a kid would write."

"You can read it?"

"Yeah. No idea how, but it makes sense."

"What does it say?"

"Here goes.

_October 2__nd__. I played with Bob.  
It was fun, but I went too far away and "He" got angry._

"That's it."

"There's more of that later," I said. "Let me know if anything interesting turns up."

As Eileen wandered around, looking at the tombstones, I went to investigate the lamp by the gate. It crackled and flickered happily in its crevice in the corner of the graveyard. At its foot lay a long clublike thing with its end wrapped in rags, like a huge cotton swab. It would have made a decent club, actually, given its length and weight, but its intended purpose was obvious.

"Eileen!"

"Hm?"

"Check this out. This should solve the darkness problem."

It felt good and heavy in my hands, but then again anything that could potentially damage the undead felt pretty good in my hands just then. She limped up to me and stared at it, then grinned.

"Definitely. Let's get out of here."

She shivered, and I realized that that little dress she was wearing probably wasn't very warm. It was short and had no back or sleeves at all, and seemed to be made of some thin stretchy stuff.

"You're cold, aren't you?" That's me, master of the obvious.

"Not really, no," she lied. But not very well. She was in bad enough shape already…what could I do to help?

"Hold this for a minute," I said, handing her the torch. I started to unbutton my shirt. It wasn't much, but it would help keep the chill off of her skin.

"What? Henry, no…"

"No, it's OK. I have a T-shirt on under this."

"No, really, Henry, don't."

I stopped, confused. She was obviously cold, but…_oh._

"Oh. Sorry." I started buttoning up again.

She took one look at me, and her hand was on my arm. "No, it's not like that. I didn't mean…"

_No, Eileen, it's OK, really. You don't know where this shirt has been, anyway. I do, and I'm not going to tell you unless I have to._

She sighed, and raised an eyebrow. "This is dumb. We shouldn't be this awkward around each other. It's not you, Henry, not in any way. I'm OK, really. That shirt…you need it more than I do."

"But…you're cold. I can tell." Any moron could. It had taken me long enough to figure out, hadn't it?

She shrugged. "A little bit, but moving around helps me keep warm. And anyway, if you gave it to me, all you'd have between them and you would be that T-shirt. You need it more than I do. Really. I'll be fine."

I frowned at her.

"Really?"

"Really."

"I don't like this."

"I know. Thank you for offering. I'll be OK."

"If you say so."

"Believe me, Henry, I'll let you know if I start having problems. Of any kind."

"Guess I have to trust you on that."

"I trust you with my life."

What could I say to that? Still, it was easier to look at the torch in my hands at that moment than it was to look at her.

"How about we light this thing up?" I asked. "It'll help you keep warm, too."

She smiled. "Sounds good to me."

I touched the dingy cotton rags to the fire, and they burst into flame that crackled cheerfully at us. It _was_ a little warmer, and I felt happier about that than about the light that somehow didn't seem to spread as far as it should.

My hand was on the handle of one of the huge double doors when I heard it…the same sound that we'd heard on our way out of the subway just a few minutes before.

_Click._

The hammer of a gun…_dammit!_

I pulled the door open as fast as I could and ushered Eileen through. As I turned to close the door, I saw him – Walter – striding purposefully directly toward us, with the familiar dark circle of the gun barrel pointed at my face. Time to go.

The fenced-in area beyond looked just the same as it had before. Dark well, trees, long winding path toward the next gate, nothing new…but for two hellhounds prowling around the other end of the path, and Eileen leaning against the well, catching her breath.

"I can't believe it!" she said as I hurried toward her. "Doesn't he ever let up?"

"Don't know," I said quickly. I held the torch near her, to warm her a little. "He hasn't been around this much before. But it doesn't seem like it," I continued, "and we've got to get out of here before he comes through those doors. Let's go."

She turned toward the path, but stopped and swiveled around as best she could. "Henry!"

"What?"

"There's something in the well. Down there! You can just see it in the light."

"Don't have time for that now."

"But – "

"If it's important, I'll come back for it. Come on!"

And there he was, smiling at us. But I hadn't heard the doors open and close…whatever. I grabbed Eileen's hand and pulled her down the path as fast as I could, but it wasn't fast enough. The dogs were coming at us, and I couldn't fight them off with one hand. I had to let her go.

"Henry – "

"It's OK. Go. I'll be right behind you."

That torch not only laid a good wallop on the dogs, but it also burned holes into their raw flesh. Thank God I was getting used to the smell by now. But even then, I barely made it to the gate in time to get it open and shove both of us through, bullets whizzing by all the time. There was another dog in the next space, but it was easier to dodge one than two, and we made it to the gate safely. Through the gate, and we'd be in the (reasonably) safe confines of Wish House.

* * *

Something wasn't right. The air was full of smoke…

_Oh my God._

Wish House had been a moderate-sized but imposing structure before, with two floors and windows all the way around on the top floor. Now…all that was left was smoke and charred wood and a few floorboards. The whole building was gone. It had burned down. Completely.

_Well, of course it did, dumbass. Remember Jasper the human torch?_

"What's wrong?" _Of course…she's never seen it before._

"This…this isn't what it looked like before," I stuttered lamely. "There were two stories and windows and a porch and…"

"What happened?"

Dammit, I had to tell her now. I'd been avoiding it as long as possible, but…I guess she'd have to find out sooner or later anyway.

"When I first got here…there was this guy named Jasper. I found him sitting on a rock, over that way. He was going on and on about the cult and the mother stone and some nosy guy…he was a real cult nut. I thought he was one of them. He wasn't, but he wanted to be. He told me so. We both managed to get inside this place, and he wandered off and…"

"…and?"

"…the next time I saw him, he was burning to death. Inside the building. He must have lit this whole place up."

We were standing by where the stairs had been, at the front of the house. The stairs were gone, too, but there were a few fallen boards in their place. My eye caught a gleam of white at my feet. There was a little piece of paper there.

_Something's here but nothing's here.  
I feel something from the well.  
Something's missing.  
Aaaaaaaahhhh!!!!!  
It has begun!!!_

And strangely enough, below the written screams and panic, was a neat little signature:

_Jasper_

"That doesn't make any sense," Eileen said petulantly.

"It probably will later," I muttered, and I shoved it into my pocket. Just like everything else that was hopefully going to make sense later, right?

Just then, her fingers gripped my arm tightly, and I looked up to see what was the matter. She was staring at a dark figure just visible through the smoke, up on the boards. It looked to be sitting in a chair or something…and it had _no head_. It couldn't be…

"Stay here," I said, and I slowly walked up the fallen boards up onto the foundations of the building. A closer look revealed a wheelchair on the near corner, in which sat a charred wooden torso. Wood, thank God. No head, no limbs, just a trunk…with writing on it.

_Though my body be destroyed,  
I will not let you pass here.  
To prepare for the Receiver of Wisdom…  
I cut my body into five pieces and hid them in the darkness.  
When my body is once again whole, the path to below will be opened.  
If you are the Receiver of Wisdom, you will understand my words._

_The ritual has begun…_

Very, very creepy.

Eileen was beside me now. That's one thing I could never do…keep her from investigating things. She peered at the note as well.

"Is…is that…him?"

"No, it's too big to be Jasper. He was a skinny guy…this is bigger. And it's wooden, anyway. What I don't get is this 'Receiver of Wisdom' stuff…it sounds familiar…"

I pulled my scrapbook from my pocket, and flipped through the sheaf of papers stuffed into the back until I got to the torn-out page I'd found here hours before.

…_From the Darkness and Void, bring forth Gloom,  
and gird thyself with Despair for the Giver of Wisdom._

A Giver, not a Receiver. So, not quite the same. Still, it seemed as if they might be two halves of a whole somehow. A giver and a receiver…you can't have one without the other, right?

There was something squirming in the pit of my stomach. Something was trying to work its way into my consciousness, and I had the feeling that it was something I wasn't going to like. Not at all. I had no choice…if I could start making sense out of all of this, maybe we could figure out a way out of this hell that would somehow keep us from getting killed.

But whatever my brain was trying to tell me, it wasn't coming any time soon.

_Five pieces, hidden in the darkness._

That made sense. The torso was missing two arms, two legs, and a head. So, this time it looked as though we had a nice little puzzle. Find five wooden body parts and pop 'em back onto the huge wooden dummy. Like some twisted kids' toy. Hurrah. Map time.

I sat down on the edge of the burned wood, and helped Eileen down next to me. The map I'd drawn before was hopefully still correct. The subway hadn't changed much from the first time through, so with a little luck this place was still the same too. The torch had burned out a while back, and we squinted at the pages together in the dim light.

"We're looking for five places to hide a piece of wood, right?" Eileen piped up hopefully. "Sounds like a dirty joke or something." It made me smile, just a little. She was still trying to perk me up after all this time. She was unstoppable. I loved that about her.

Watch it, Henry. Don't say things that…don't.

"Yeah. Five dark places…that's it!" I jabbed my finger at each of the five circles drawn on the map. "Five wells. They're dark and deep…that must be what Jasper was talking about. He said something about 'feeling something from the well…' that's gotta be where they are."

"So…here, here, here, here, and…uh, Henry…"

"Yeah. Gotta go back to that well we just passed. That must have been what you saw in it. Well, shit. Oh. Sorry."

"No problem."

I looked at the map again. The circles were all spread out on the four paths that stretched outwards from the walls of Wish House. Two on the long northeast path, and one on each of the others. And who knows what else in the way…

"Eileen, can you stay here for a few minutes?"

"How come?"

"I'm…I'm going to go get them."

She stared at me as if I was insane. Hell, maybe I was. "You're WHAT?"

"Look," I said, closing the map. "I know this place better than you do, and I can get in and out more quickly. It's pretty safe right here, it seems…Walter hasn't shown up, and nothing else can get in through the gates."

"What about ghosts?"

"Uh…" I spotted a lone candle sitting on the foundation just behind her shoulder. I reached behind her and grabbed it, then handed it to her. "Here. I'll grab my lighter through the Hole over there. This will keep the ghosts away for a little while…if any show up, just light the candle and stay close to it. They can't get to you if you're near the candle."

She looked doubtful. I took her hand and squeezed it.

"Remember that whole trusting-me-with-your-life thing?"

She nodded.

"Yeah, but…but you come back quickly, OK?"

"OK. Back in a minute."

"OK."

* * *

All seemed quiet on the home front…at least, until I closed the chest lid and heard a weird little noise from somewhere. It was too faint to discern, so I stood still and listened again. Nothing. But then, just as I was about to open the laundry room door, I heard a faint

_mrowr_

..it almost sounded like a cat. It was coming from somewhere inside…

_rrowl_

From the kitchen. From the left side by the door…from the…fridge? Must be inside…

_What the HELL is that?_

Yep. Add that to the clock and the windows and the screaming babies. Now I also had one undead skinned cat, lying in a bloody mess on top of my crisper drawer, mewling mournfully as if it wanted to be let out to run around and catch little skinned undead mice or something.

_Sorry, little guy. Never had any rodent problem here, undead or otherwise._

I slammed the door shut and made a mental note to hit up Frank for a new fridge when this was all done.

The note under the door confirmed what I'd started to suspect a while back. Joseph knew that there was something fishy about "Walter Sullivan"'s death ten years ago…that is, he hadn't died. Completely, anyway. Well, when you see the guy running around with your own eyes, trying to kill you at every turn, that's really the only possible conclusion, right? But what worried me was the end of the note.

_7 years ago he did something in that apartment.  
I'm certain there's a link between that and the bizarre things that have been happening here.  
Just a little bit more and I'll have this whole thing sorted out.  
I may even find that the real Walter is somewhere nearby…_

_July 18_

…_did something_. That wasn't something I wanted to think about. Not at all. Crazy cult-freak serial killer who fakes his own death and then shows up at my place to do…what? Some horrible ritual? Some lying-low until the buzz died down? Who knew…

The curling in the pit of my stomach was just a little larger now. I slipped my old lighter into my pocket and headed for the Hole.

As I closed the door to the laundry room, the torch hanging off of my belt bumped into the door and got tangled in the rungs of the ladder just inside. I turned to pull it free, and my eye caught the small blue plastic oil can that I kept in there for reasons I'd long ago forgotten. Suddenly, I knew it was important, but my tired brain took a moment to realize why.

_Oil burns. Torch burns. Torch doesn't burn for very long. That could be a problem. But, torch __**and**__ oil…_

I unscrewed the cap and shoved the torch into the half-empty can and wiggled it around for several seconds before pulling it out and closing the can again. It wasn't dripping, but it was good and soaked. That would be a big help.


	22. The forest again 2

Eileen wasn't sitting on the foundations of Wish House any more when I got back. I think I stopped breathing for a moment before I heard a _clank_ from my left. She was standing over by an old metal jungle gym by the wall, swinging something in her hand.

"Check _this_ out," she said with a grin as I approached. In her hand was a length of heavy metal chain. "I found it hanging over here. Don't know what they used it for, but I sure know what _I'm_ going to do with it." She raised her arm and slammed the chain into the wooden wall with a huge _THUNK_. "Now I can actually do some damage." And she was raring to go, I could see.

How was I going to break this to her? "Eileen…uh…"

"Yeah?"

"…I want you to stay here. Let me go get the pieces. It won't take long, I promise."

Her mouth fell open.

"But…I can help, Henry! I can fight, too! Now, more than ever…"

"No. I can't let you. It's not safe out there."

The look she gave me then…I never, ever want to see it on anybody's face, not ever again.

"Can't LET me?"

Oops. Wrong choice of words, it seemed.

"You can't LET me? That's right. You can't LET me do anything. You can't LET me defend myself, or follow along behind you as you go off saving the world, or whatever the hell it is you do while you're away. You can't LET me."

_But…but I…_

"Well, Henry, it isn't up to _you_. There are two of us stuck in this hell, so it's up to _me_, too. If Walter wins, we're both going to die. So I'm coming along from now on whether you like it or not."

I have to say, I hadn't gotten chewed out like that since Leslie broke up with me, and it didn't get any better with age. She was completely right, too, even if she seemed to be overreacting just a little. I had no right to stop her. I was just trying to protect her, to keep her safe…wasn't that what I was supposed to do? Not just because I was the guy and she was the girl…but yeah, there was that too, for what it was worth…

_I hate this. What should I say now?_

I looked at her face, at the one eyebrow that slanted down sharply toward her angry eye and at the bandage wrinkling on the other side as its twin did the same, and I knew that she would brook no bullshit at this point. I had to be honest.

"I'm sorry, Eileen, I really am," I said lamely. "I…I'm just trying to keep you safe, that's all. I didn't mean it like that…I just don't want you to die like they did."

_Crap! You idiot!_

"Like…they did? The other people?"

_Shit. Shitshitshitshit. She really doesn't need to hear about this, but..._

"Yeah."

"Who died, Henry? How many?"

Now I really had to be honest.

"Like Cynthia…and Jasper. And Andrew. And…and Richard."

"Richard…not Richard, from 207?"

"Yeah. Braintree."

"He's dead?"

"Yes."

"You're sure."

"Yes."

Her eye widened as she realized what I was saying.

"You saw it happen, didn't you?"

"Yes."

She looked at me closely for a minute, I guess to see if I was lying to scare her or something. I wouldn't have done that, of course, but I didn't blame her for checking.

"They're all dead, Eileen. Cynthia died in the subway, in the King Street line ticket office. You saw…where it happened. Jasper died here, in Wish House, just over there." I waved a hand at the burnt-out ruins. "Andrew died in the prison, which is where we're probably going next, and Richard died in…in his own room, back at the building. I saw them die, everyone but Andrew. I saw you get attacked, too, remember? And…and…" I dropped my hands. "I don't want to see you die, too."

Her face had grown very serious. Then, she reached around behind me, pulled my notebook from my pocket, and opened it to the subway map. The little "Cynthia" was still written there…and the "Jasper" on this map, and "Andrew" on the next, and "Richard" on the next. Her fingers traced the names on the pages.

When she spoke, her voice was very small.

"You don't want me to die?"

_WHAT?_

"Because that's something I've had to keep in mind. I shouldn't be telling you this," she said, as she handed the book back to me, "because it could get me killed…but…"

"What is it?" I said as gently as I could manage around the lump in my throat.

She looked me straight in the eye.

"For all I know, you're going to kill me."

I was speechless. She continued.

"It's possible, you know. You're telling me that you saw these people die, but it's possible that…well, that you killed them, and that you're going to kill me, too. For all I know, you've been dragging me through all of this for some reason that only you're aware of, just so that you can…do whatever to me later when I'm tired and worn down. All of this might be for nothing. At least, not for me. I don't know," she said, shaking her head. "I don't think you are. You don't seem like you would do any of that. If you did, it'd be stupid to tell you this in the first place. But you never can tell, right?"

_No. I guess you never can. After all, I probably don't look like somebody who would put an axe through a two-headed baby, right?_

"Right," was all I could say. "You never can tell."

Then, I found my tongue.

"But _I _know what I'm thinking, Eileen, and I just want to keep you as safe and alive as I can. I've seen too many people die today, and I don't want to see you die, too. I don't know what I can do to prove it to you. If you can think of anything, let me know and I'll do it if I can. But I'd…I'd rather die myself than see you get killed. You're going to have to take my word on that."

"I will," she said. "I'm sorry I yelled at you earlier. I believe you. Really. It's just…its just so damn _frustrating_ not being able to help, even a little. I know I'm slowing you down, and you're getting hurt because you have to wait for me. I feel like a real burden on you. I don't want that, Henry," she said, and before I knew it she was hugging me again. "I don't want you to think of me that way. I'm sorry," she whispered into my ear.

And I believed her. I gave her a squeeze.

"Fine," I said with mock annoyance. "Come on."

I let her go and lifted my axe from my belt.

"I need you to stay behind me, so I don't have to worry about you running into anything that comes our way, or hitting you accidentally. But the moment you start getting tired or hurt, we're coming back here, OK?"

"OK." She squeezed my hand.

* * *

We decided to take the northwest path first. It was the shortest path without Walter on it (that we knew of), and I could show her exactly where we were when we got to the lake. Turned out there were two twin-headed babies in there, and they were very, very fast on their…uh, hands. But Eileen was as good as her word, and stayed behind me as I swung the axe and took them down. Once they hit the ground, she hobbled forward as fast as she could and smacked them down with her chain long enough to let me put my boot through their brains.

Our strategy was to clean out the areas of resistance first, then worry about getting the parts out of the well. But when the doubleheads were dead and we went to lean over the well, I realized that we'd forgotten one key part…the need to have a light source so that we could see into the damn well. Duh.

"Great," I muttered. "We're going to have to come back to this one. Let's get to the lake."

The abandoned construction site was the same as before. There were a couple of the usual useful things lying around, but Eileen found something of much greater interest lying halfway along the path, on the side. I turned from picking up a bottle of health goop to see her bent over, struggling to lift something with her good arm.

"Eileen…"

"It's heavy as hell," she said, "But maybe you can use it."

I took the long wooden handle from her and lifted the huge pickaxe into the air. She was right – the thing weighed a ton. Its head was red and rusty, but still pointy and lethal. On the handle was engraved a single word:

_DESPAIR_

"Noun, or imperative verb?" she said under her breath. I smiled.

"Either works here. Let's see what it can do."

I took several steps away from her, lifted the axe in both hands, and swung at a nearby stack of wooden beams. The weight of the thing nearly threw me off balance, but the point was sharp, and it sank into the wood so deeply that I had to use both arms and a foot braced against the stack to yank it back out again.

"Wow," she said.

"Problem is, this thing's way too heavy. You see how fast things move around here. I don't think this is going to be useful. Still," I said, "might as well hang onto it for now."

"Yeah. After all, you never know when you're going to…I don't know, have to mine for gold or something, right?"

She smiled at me. It was a silly thing to say, and we both knew it, but that was when I realized just how hard she'd been working over the last couple of hours to try to keep my spirits up. She was dead tired, and in obvious pain, but somehow she managed to keep a smile on her face and stay upbeat. It came more naturally to her than it does to me, but still…I appreciated it more than I could say just then.

"Right."

* * *

The lake was still there, just as before, and just as darkly beautiful as before. Eileen caught her breath.

"_Now_ I know where I am," she said excitedly, as she hurried to the rail and leaned out over the cliff like a little kid.

"Careful there."

"That's Old Silent Hill, right?"

"Yeah. And Ashfield is way off to the right somewhere."

"That's comforting to know. But…wait," she said, peering across the lake. "Shouldn't we be able to see the amusement park from here? Or at least the big Ferris wheel?"

I peered as well. "Yeah. Hell, you can see it from South Vale, so we should be able to see it here. It's like it isn't there."

"Yeah. I don't think it is. I don't remember hearing about them tearing it down. Do you?"

"No…it's only about ten years old. The park had another one way back when, I heard, but it had to be torn down, and it was a while before they built the new one. It should be there, but it isn't."

_No Ferris wheel. The park must have looked like that before it was built…_

That thing in my gut was shifting again. I remembered the old token machines in the subway and the vintage office furniture in the prison.

_That would explain it…the question shouldn't be where we are, but __**when**__ we are._

"What's wrong, Henry?"

"Nothing," I said, turning away. Something glinted on the old broken statue off to the left, and I headed toward it. But just as I saw movement, I heard Eileen's quick gasp behind me. She backed away as the little striped sweater and head of thick light-brown hair moved rhythmically back and forth and the little body shifted from foot to foot.

It was the little boy again. Little Walter was standing by the statue, fidgeting and wiggling around as if he had to go to the bathroom.

_He seems to show up around here a lot._

I moved around the statue slowly and approached him from the front so as not to startle him. He saw me, and instead of running away, he looked up at me with surprised recognition. I bent down to talk to him.

"Are you…Walter Sullivan?" I asked, as gently as I could.

His small hands went to the pedestal of the statue, and he began to back away around it.

"That's what everybody calls me," he said in his little voice, "but I don't really have a name." He didn't seem afraid of me, but as I moved toward him, he circled backward to keep a distance between us. "Or a home either."

I raised my own hands to show him that I meant him no harm. "Well, what about a mom or a dad? Do you have those?"

"Yeah, but I never met 'em. They left South Ashfield Heights right after I was born." His voice held neither joy nor sorrow, just that deadpan tone that only comes from the innocent and ignorant. Then, he stood still and beamed up at me.

"But soon, I'll get to see my mom!"

That was the happiest thought in the world to him, I could tell. He was beginning to lose his distrust of me, and I needed to draw him out, to make him feel more comfortable.

"Do you know where she is now?"

He looked at me as if I was the silly kid. "Yeah, of course. Right where I was born." His chin lifted. "Lots of people tried to stop me, but it's fine now."

"Stop you? From what?"

"From seeing her. It says in the Scriptures that I'll be with her."

_That's it...God says that he's going to find his mother. Well, kid, I'm sorry, but I get the feeling that you're going to learn very, very soon that what grown-ups tell you about God isn't always true…_

But he was still radiating happiness. "I gotta hurry! Mom's waiting!"

Then, he turned and ran off into the work site. I watched him go and couldn't think of another question to stop him.

Poor kid. His single goal in life was to find his mother, and some thoughtless person had told him along the line that God was going to bring her to him, maybe to make him feel better or who knows why. Now, it had become the center of his existence… but it was just a recipe for bitter disappointment. Inevitable, bitter disappointment, and I hoped that it wouldn't screw him up too badly when he finally realized that.

_But if I'm right about who he is…maybe it did._

Eileen was still staring at the hole in the hill through which he'd passed. "That poor boy," she said, shaking her head. "It's hopeless, isn't it?"

"I don't know, but after all this time…it sure looks that way," I said.

"I guess he doesn't have anywhere else to go now," she said.

"Maybe…and he might not, but it sounds as if he's going anyway."

We stood there for a moment, by the statue, just thinking. Then, Eileen turned to the statue and ran her fingers over the shining golden medallion on its front. The broken figure held it like a shield in one hand, with a spear in the other.

"This looks just like the emblems on the doors," she said. At that moment, she jumped as the medallion fell off of the statue directly into her hand. I caught her hand with mine to keep the medallion from falling onto her foot.

"Yeah, it does," I said. I took it from her and examined it more closely. Same letters, same circles, same everything. What the hell. Might as well hold onto it for now, like the pickaxe. You know the drill by now. Pack rats 'r' us.

The lamp by the door was burning. That made life easier. I touched my torch to the flame and headed through the door. The formerly empty room was now home to two or three undead types, but they were of the slow, floating variety, and it wasn't too difficult to evade them and get to the other gate.

Back outside, I handed the torch to Eileen and leaned down into the well. Sure enough, way down inside under the edge, something was wedged in between two stones. I reached down inside and pulled out a long, charred wooden leg.

"One down, four to go."

Eileen beamed happily, and I couldn't help but smile right back.

* * *

The leg snapped right on to the torso, which looked more grotesque with just a right leg than it had without any at all. Still, one part done. I took a quick trip back through the Hole to drop off stuff (including the pickaxe and the medallion), and we headed through the southeast door. There were only a couple of bird-bats here, and Eileen made short work of them with her chain while I picked up the brown bottle sitting by some blood-stained poles that I didn't want to look at too closely.

In the next room, though, was Walter with his gun. That was all we needed to see before we took off for the far door at top speed. As I hurried along, I heard the sound of a small engine and a familiar loud buzzing noise, and I realized that we were now facing both a gun _and_ a chainsaw. Not for long, through. He was too busy laughing at us to really attack with any seriousness, and all that happened was that I got my shirt sleeve ripped by a passing bullet.

The next area was the one with the freaky hand-shaped root from before, where I'd dug up the Wish House key. The root was still there, as was the writing on the tree. Eileen stopped for a moment to scan it quickly.

"Anything interesting?"

"No, not yet. But this and the others…they're like diary entries of some poor kid. He's at the orphanage, and he really, really hates it."

"If you'd seen the place, you would have too."

"That bad, huh?"

Something glistened on the ground by the gate. Another silver bullet. That made two.

The guy in the overalls was gone from the next area this time, fortunately, and it made me even happier to see the lit lamp not ten feet from the well. A few seconds of uncomfortable rummaging around inside the well produced another wooden leg.

The trip back ended up being a little more eventful. Walter was still there, of course, watching and laughing and taking potshots as the mood took him. Just as I was herding Eileen through the gate, I heard a whisper in my ear.

"Henry."

I spun around. He was _right behind me_, breathing down my neck. I could see every pore on his nose, see the short light blond stubble on his chin and upper lip. What struck me at that moment was that he didn't have a smell. You notice the weirdest things sometimes...he didn't even smell like skin. He smelled like nothing. Like there was nothing there at all.

Then, there was something hard and cold poking into my ribs. Before I could figure out what it was, he smiled at me, that creepy otherworldly smile...and then, he just turned and walked away. I had no idea why any of it had happened. I stood there for a moment in bafflement, then I threw myself through the gate and looked around for Eileen.

She was standing there, frozen in place and staring at me, with a face whiter than the cast on her arm.

"Are you OK?" I asked her.

She just stood there, mouth open, gaping at me. That answered my question, but I couldn't see anything obviously wrong with her…nothing new, anyway. So…

Her eyes were fixed on my left side. I took another breath to ask her again, but then I stopped because I couldn't breathe. Actually, I couldn't move my chest at all. That was strange. I looked down at the spreading pool of red on the ground, soaking into the dry dirt, then followed the stream of blood up my jeans to my shirt. There was a hole there, a big one, inches across, surrounded by red, down through the shirt and the T-shirt and all the way through the skin and beyond. I stared at the white shards of my own ribs, broken and poking out among the fragments of bloody fabric, and then I realized that I...

…guess I hadn't heard the gun go off. Weird…

The next thing that I remember is waking up flat on my back on the ground just inside the Wish House fence. I was sore, and cold and damp, but I seemed to be alive. Breathing hurt, a _lot_, but at least it was possible. Opening my eyes was very hard to do, too. Everything around me was fuzzy, and I strained to see.

Eileen was sitting on the ground by my side. She was facing away from me, with her elbows on her knees and her head in her arms. She looked sad. Poor Eileen. She'd been through so much today…why was she so sad? She shouldn't be. I had to find out why.

_What's wrong, Eileen?..._

My arm stretched out slowly and knocked something over. The noise woke me up a little more, but Eileen nearly jumped out of her skin. She spun around and stared at me for a second or so with her mouth hanging open, and then I vaguely remembered what had happened.

"Henry! You're…"

She was bending over me now, with her good hand on my forehead. Her eyes were swollen and red, as if she'd been crying for a while. Her skin was very warm. That was strange…she was usually cold. I tried to talk, but breathing was still a challenge.

"Shhh," she said, putting her finger on my lips. "Don't. You need to rest." She looked around ruefully. "Sorry, no hospital beds here."

"It's...OK." God, that was hard..."What..."

"He shot you," she said plainly. Her face swam above mine. "Point-blank, in the ribs. Blew out a big chunk of your side, and a lot more too. You were bleeding everywhere." She followed my eyes to the door to the area we'd just left. "How we got you back here, I have no idea. I think you were out on your feet." Her voice was soft, but firm, and it scared me. Must have been something serious. No, from what she said it _had_ been.

She brushed the hair out of my eyes.

"You've got one bottle of the brown stuff in you. Is that enough, or are you going to need more?"

Quick physical inventory. OK, maybe not so quick.

"More."

"OK."

She opened another bottle. I tried to pull myself up, but my arm slipped. She caught me (again, no idea how), and I ended up half-leaning against her as she unscrewed the cap from the bottle and held it to my mouth. Gradually, the fuzz lifted from my brain. Halfway through, I took the bottle from her hand, put it on the ground and tried to get up, but I guess I was still weak, because Eileen was able to hold me down with her cast.

"You're not going anywhere yet, not until you've rested," she said.

I closed my eyes and tried to think back, to figure out what had gone wrong. I could feel the little worms doing their work.

"Shirt didn't help much," I said.

She laughed without mirth. "Yeah, really made a difference there."

"Sure you don't need it?"

"Sure."

"I'm OK, Eileen," I said. Strictly speaking, I wasn't, but by now I knew that I would be in a minute or two. Good enough for now. At least, the hole in my side had fixed itself. I could feel the cold air that came through the holes in my shirts touching skin and not raw flesh. "I'm fine. Really."

Her jaw clenched and she shook her head. "You're a terrible liar, Henry," she said softly. "Just terrible." She wrapped her good arm around me and put her chin on my head. It felt warm and comforting, sitting there halfway in her lap, just _being_ for a moment.

"That bad?" I asked.

"Yeah. But I'm a bad liar too."

"Well…guess you don't have to worry about me hiding things from you."

"No, guess I don't. I want to help, you know. I really _do…_"

A wet drop fell from the tip of her chin onto my forehead. She was still crying.

"I know. Thanks."

We sat there like that for a few minutes, keeping our thoughts to ourselves. Such as they were…I was too tired to do much but rest. Thinking could wait. But her muscles were tense, and I knew that she was turning things over in her head.

"If he's going to kill us," she said slowly, "why doesn't he just _do it_ and get it over with?"

"I don't know if he wants to. Yet."

"Wish he'd make up his mind. Bastard."

"Heh. Yeah."

"Asshole."

"Pest." It still hurt a little to talk.

"Jerk."

"Prick."

"Dickweed."

"Obstructionist." Always liked that word.

"WE HATE YOU, WALTER!" she screamed at the top of her lungs. Then, she laughed. "Damn, that felt good."

"Sounds like."

"You should try it."

"Nah, I'm good," I said, standing up slowly. This time, she didn't stop me, but she watched me all the way up.

"You sure you're OK?"

"You trust me with your life, remember?"

"Yeah, but I'm not sure I trust you with _yours._"

I turned to help her up and saw the three-foot wide dark stain on the dirt at her knees. It was time to go.

"You know, if he's over there, then maybe he's not by the cemetery any more. Let's find out." I held my hand out to her.

* * *

No such luck, of course. Walter was there, too, along with some canine help. It simplified things, though, since the plan changed from kill-everything-that-moves to a straightforward run-like-HELL. The torch had burned out while I was unconscious, but the flame in the cemetery was still lit, and we were able to pull out a rounded wooden head from the well. Now, our wheelchair-bound wooden friend at least had a good head on his shoulders.

"That leaves the arms," Eileen said as we stood there, regarding our work.

"Are you up to it?" I asked.

"Hell yeah," she said. "And no, it isn't getting any worse…not as far as I can tell, anyway."


	23. The forest again 3

For a change of pace, I present you with the short version of the long northeast path. Politically incorrect, perhaps. You have been warned.

Space with double-headed undead baby. Easily avoided.

Well. Torch not lit, so can't do a whole lot. Will come back to this one.

HOLY SHIT, IT'S JASPER. Floating a few feet off above the ground, and lit up like a burning Christmas tree. Still holding that strange chalice, and now swinging its pointed bottom at us. Clearly not feeling social at the moment. Fortunately, handy Saint Medallion sitting right by where I'd first met him. Through the opposite gate ASAP.

Room with running car (_still running? Thought these old beaters had crappy gas mileage)_, bird-bats, and Jasper the Crispy Ghost pulling himself through the wall. Outta there. After pulling Eileen away from the fascinating red writing, of course. No time to waste.

Factory ramp. No bird-bats this time, but brown bottle and undead company. Through double doors at top.

More factory. Guy with overalls and undead friend. Up ramp, through double doors (again).

Outside again. Lamp on right. Hole on left. Otherwise, quiet. Pockets full, so quick trip back home to unload. Light torch, head through gate…

…and I'm back where I started the first time through. Well on left, ape in front. Have a little time to work on ape, since lamp in next room when needed. But, Eileen decides to take this one. Battle ensues thusly:

Eileen: _(whack with chain)_  
Ape: _(look of bafflement)_  
Eileen: Yeah, bitch. It's me. _(whack)_  
Ape: _(growl)_  
Eileen: Oh yeah? Well, how about THIS? _(whack whack)_  
Ape: _(beats chest)_  
Eileen: God, how stereotypical. _(whack whack)_  
Ape: _(falls over)_  
Me: _(stomp)_  
Ape: _(dies)_  
Eileen: Good riddance.  
Me: Nice job.  
Eileen: Thanks. I think I'm starting to like this.

Now have dead ape, another brown bottle, another candle, and a wooden arm. Realize that final wooden arm is only a few rooms, several ghosts, and one flaming undead cult fanatic away. Contemplate potential future career in medical prosthetics supply for a fraction of a second before deciding against it.

Crap. Room beyond with Hole now full of rampaging wattly missing links. Axe and chain time. Eileen seems positively ecstatic afterward. Worry a little about Eileen, then decide that it's keeping her warm and happy, so can't be all bad.

Ghosts. Doors. Ghosts. More doors. Car. Gates. Jasper flaming away at our heels the whole time. Nahkeehonies (wasn't that what he called the rocks, something like that?). Well, and _finally_ last wooden arm. Gates. Eileen goes apeshit on rampaging aforementioned double-headed undead baby, takes a shot on the arm. Axe takes care of the rest. And finally, we stumble back into the happy confines of Wish House, mission accomplished and a little worse for wear.

* * *

I had to drop off stuff at my place before we finished assembling the wooden mannequin. Eileen sat down on the burned boards to rest, but I could see that her back was flushed red.

"Do you mind?"

"What? Oh – no. Is something wrong?"

I put my hand against the skin of her back. It was hot, but there was something else…the skin was pulsating strangely. Her arms and legs were, too…

"You sure you're feeling OK?"

"Yeah. What is it, Henry?"

"Your skin is very…warm. Hang out here. I won't be long."

It occurred to me as I was unloading things (and listening to the mewling of the cat in my fridge) that I might need that big gold medallion from by the lake, since we were running out of places to go, and I hadn't found a use for it yet. So I grabbed it out of the chest before coming back.

Eileen's head drooped over her knees as she sat on the foundations of Wish House. But she stood up when she heard me approaching as if nothing was wrong. I made a mental note to keep a very close eye on her, in case she got any worse. She'd been up and at it for much longer than was probably good for her at this point, and I didn't know how much more she was going to be able to take.

"Ready?" she said with a little too much cheer.

"Ready."

The arms went on one after the other with hollow _clunk_s. For a second or two, nothing happened. Eileen and I stood there, waiting, and then just as I was about to take a step forward the head began to lift up. It turned its face to the sky and opened its mouth as if to scream. No sound came out. The face seemed familiar, but I couldn't place it just then…still can't. Sorry.

Then, the arms dropped to the wheels of the chair, and the hands gripped the wheels and began to turn them. In slow motion, the chair rolled backwards, fell off of the edge of the foundation, and smashed sideways into the ground. The mannequin fell to pieces as well, and we were left watching the wheel of the chair as it spun slowly and then ground to a stop.

Now, we could see two handles set into the floor, into a trapdoor in the foundation. I didn't remember it being there before, but considering what a mess the place had been I easily could have missed it. Ever Downward, right?

Below the trapdoor was a short flight of stairs that led down into a small room below the Wish House. The fire that had destroyed the rest of the building had spared this room, and the altar and hangings were unmarked. A small door led out of the room, with a large circular depression in the middle. It was locked, though, and dammit, I didn't have a key. Come to think of it, there hadn't been a single key in the entire area. Then, I put two and two together and fished out the one thing we'd found that I hadn't used yet. Sure enough, the medallion fit perfectly into the door, and the lock clicked open.

My hand was on the doorknob when Eileen's voice reached my ears.

"Henry..."

It wasn't what she said, but how she said it...I hadn't heard that kind of fear in her voice before. She was standing at the altar, leaning over a large, heavy book that lay open on the embroidered cloth. It was an old book, yellowed and frayed around the edges, but the contents were familiar.

_The Descent of the Holy Mother – "The 21 Sacraments"_

_The First Sign  
And God said,  
At the time of fullness, cleanse the world with my rage.  
Gather forth the White Oil, the Black Cup and the Blood of the Ten Sinners.  
Prepare for the Ritual of the Holy Assumption._

_The Second Sign  
And God said,  
Offer the Blood of the Ten Sinners and the White Oil.  
Be then released from the bonds of the flesh, and gain the Power of Heaven.  
From the Darkness and Void, bring forth Gloom,  
And gird thyself with Despair for the Giver of Wisdom._

OK, so far, so good...this was familiar territory...

_The Third Sign  
And God said,  
Return to the Source through sin's Temptation.  
Under the Watchful eye of the demon, wander alone in the formless Chaos.  
Only then will the Four Atonements be in alignment._

Too damn familiar. There was that worm in my stomach again.

_The Last Sign  
And God said, separate from the flesh too,  
she who is the Mother Reborn and he who is the Receiver of Wisdom.  
If this be done, by the Mystery of the 21 Sacraments,  
the Mother shall be reborn and the Nation of Sin shall be redeemed._

Worm. No, no worm. There was a snake in there eating its way out and in a second or two I'd be lying on the ground with the thing ripping its way out of me like in that old movie. My brain was moving along paths that were newly obvious to me, and I had no choice but to let it go. Pieces of the puzzle were sliding together with an audible _click._

_Ten sinners. One suicide that didn't end up being the end of the line. Then, more...Ten sinners plus one plus four is fifteen. Plus Four Atonements is nineteen, plus..._

_Nineteen out of twenty-one. Then, another is twenty of twenty-one._

_...it adds up now._

At that moment, the room blew apart into a hundred thousand little pieces...or maybe it was my head...

And there it was. It sparked in front of my eyes and burned with blue clarity and then I was looking at the hanging with the ancient, threadbare emblem of the cult in front of me and trying to comprehend just what it was I was going to have to do.

But now, _I knew._ Or at least I thought I did.

"Henry?"

Eileen's hand was on my arm, and she was looking at me with her huge eye. I turned to her with a feeling of serenity that I hadn't had in years. It would be fleeting, I knew, but I might as well enjoy it while it lasted.

"Eileen, I get it now."

"Get what?"

"It. What's going on. Why we're here...or at least, part of it." Suddenly, things didn't seem so clear any more. Better tell her while it still made sense. I took her hands and led her to the steps and guided her down to sit with me. "Let me run this past you. Your job is to find the holes and point out what sounds wrong." I'd known about some of this before, of course, but I hadn't had a chance to sanity-check it with anybody.

She put her elbows on her knees. "All right."

"Walter killed ten people to start with, right? Ten people before he was arrested and he shoved a spoon into his neck."

"Yeah, that sounds right."

"Let's say that Walter wasn't a raving lunatic. Just for a minute."

"OK."

"Let's say that he actually had a plan in all of this. That he killed those ten people for a reason...because he needed something they had. Something that he knew they wouldn't give him voluntarily."

"I think I know where you're going with this. You mean, like, say...their blood." Yeah. Eileen was damn sharp.

"Like their blood. He needed ten sinners. So ten he got."

"But weren't two of his victims kids? How could they be sinners in anybody's book?"

"I don't know. I guess he wasn't picky."

"But it didn't do any good. He was arrested and killed himself."

"No, that's the thing," I said. I turned to her and squeezed her hand. "Joseph left me a note saying that maybe Walter hadn't really died in jail. Not really. I'm not sure what he meant by that, but whatever it was, Walter was still around. He was seen in the apartment building after that, going up the stairs to one of the rooms. Guess which one."

"To...oh shit. To 302."

"Yeah. And Joseph thought that something happened in there. That was ten years ago. Before he moved in. I don't know what it was, but he seemed pretty freaked out by it."

"And you think it had something to do with that stuff we just read."

"Well, do the math," I said. "Ten victims to start with, so ten…blood samples. Then, he kills himself. Or not. I don't know. Whatever. That's eleven." _Click._ Another odd fact fit into place. "And what was written on that coffin?"

"11/21. So." She shook her head. "He was his own eleventh victim. I can't believe I just said that. This is just crazy."

"Is it wrong, though?"

"No...that's the really weird thing. I don't think it is."

"_Be then released from the bonds of the flesh, and gain the Power of Heaven_. God only knows how he did it, but that's got to be what happened. It's the only way to explain the rest of it."

"Twenty-one, and we're at eleven. So, ten left."

"Yeah. Joseph said that number twelve came along a few years later. The cops figured it was a copycat...but what if it wasn't?"

"What took him so long?"

"Who knows. Maybe resurrecting yourself takes it out of you or something. But it did. Thirteen and fourteen came after that. And then fifteen. Joseph was one of those. I don't know for sure which. Probably the last. But Walter killed him, I'm sure of it. He did the same thing to him that he's doing to me." _Click._ Pieces were falling into place faster than I could process them. "That must be how he knew about the swords, and the medallions...and he went to the graveyard, too..."

"Sixteen was..."

"Sixteen was Cynthia. I know it because she was...he made it clear."

"Same as he did for me, right?" She fixed me with her eye.

"Yeah. Same as he did for you. Seventeen was Jasper...and eighteen was Andrew..."

"Richard was nineteen, and...well, twenty was me."

I couldn't read the look on her face at that moment, but I didn't want to ask. Maybe I should have. I don't know.

"Those four, before you...just before they died, I found these plaques nearby. There was one for each person. The first one was marked 'Temptation', the second was 'Source', and the third and fourth were 'Watchfulness' and 'Chaos'."

"The Four Atonements."

"Yeah. One per victim, in the right order too. Ten to one that numbers twelve through fifteen were 'Darkness', 'Void', 'Gloom' and 'Despair'."

"But what about the 'Giver of Wisdom'? Where does he – or she – fit in?"

I shook my head. "I don't know. Maybe somebody did double duty." _Click._ "Wait. I know who it would be...it's been Joseph writing all these notes. So he had to have been the 'Giver of Wisdom'. He's been passing along everything he found out with his diary pages. But yeah, either we're off by one or somebody doubled up."

…_there's something I'm missing here…_

Eileen was staring off into space, thinking.

"Here's something. I don't remember anything in the news about a 'Walter Sullivan copycat' since Joseph disappeared. But there were a few people in those seven or so years...three, maybe? So Joseph had to have been number fifteen. Or we would have heard about another copycat."

"Yeah. He wrote about the police finding 14/21, so he had to still have been around for that. He had to have been the last one before today. That would make him Despair. Given what he said..." Then I remembered the message carved into the wall in my apartment, that I'd found next to the hole into Eileen's room. "That's exactly what he said! _The faint hope I had is slowly changing to despair._ That's no coincidence. He was Despair and the Giver of Wisdom. Walter must have done the math and realized that, too. So it all adds up. Fifteen including Joseph and Walter, then another four today. Nineteen."

"Wrong. I was twenty. Yay for me."

At that moment, I had this incredible urge to hug her...but even if I'd had the nerve, it wouldn't have changed anything. I probably should have anyway.

"No," I said to her. I could only see her hair from where I was sitting...she probably didn't want me to see her face just then. "You're still alive. He failed with you."

"Yeah, but we're not out of the woods yet. Literally."

I put my hand on her arm (the one in the cast). "And as long as I have anything to say about it, you're still going to be alive at the end of all of this. Both of us will. We can't let him win. At least now we have some idea of what's going on."

She nodded, but her shoulders slumped. Before I could open my mouth, she spoke.

"That means that I was 'Mother'." Her voice sounded strange.

"Right."

"That leaves the 'Receiver of Wisdom'."

"Yeah. One more."

"Only one."

She turned to me, and her eye met mine. It was full of such sadness. Why? Whatever it was that she knew hadn't hit me...

_Oh_

_Oh._

_OH FU _–

If I was reading her correctly...and I didn't want to be, but we'd been on a roll lately...

_The mannequin upstairs. It bore a note just for the Receiver of Wisdom. And who had figured out how to solve the puzzle? And who's been getting red notes from the Giver of Wisdom all day? And who's the only other person involved in all of this who hasn't been killed? Yet?_

How oblivious had I been? It hadn't even occurred to me that I might be part of this puzzle. I'd just been a witness to everything that was going on. It was there, and I wasn't part of it, never part of it. Total disconnect. I'd thought that he was just a sadistic bastard, given what he was doing to others and to me, but now that I saw the plan, it was obvious. There had to be another reason that I was there. That meant that

_I was..._

"You, sir," Eileen said, pointing a single chipped nail at my chest, "are a marked man." She laughed a little. "Welcome to the club."

"Hey, speak for yourself," I said weakly. Then I looked at her, at the purple and red marks all over her skin, and knew that I didn't have the option to be weak. For all I'd dealt with, she'd had it a lot worse. "But it's not all bad, right?"

"In what way?"

_Crap. Of course she was going to call me on that._

"Uh...I'm still working on that."

"Some Receiver of Wisdom, huh? That doesn't sound too wise to me. Maybe you're safe after all."

How could she joke around about that? She was smiling so sadly...then I got the joke.

"Yeah. Maybe I am."

"Don't count on it."

She leaned into me, I put my arm around her, and we sat there on the old wooden steps in silence as it all started to sink in. Now we had a better idea of why we were there and what we were up against…but we still had absolutely no clue what we could do about it.

After a little while, I closed my eyes and sat very still, and I could almost sense the presence of the people who must have filled this room once, when it was in use. At night, after the orphans were asleep, they must have gathered here to worship their god. Maybe some of them sat on these steps just like we were doing now…

_How could people, people no different from Eileen and me…how could they go so wrong? How could they lose touch with reality to the point where they believed in these hellish rituals and warped little kids' minds to that degree? How could that have happened?_

…_but this stuff seems to work, doesn't it? It brought Walter back from the dead, and __**something**__ allowed him to create these worlds of monsters and death and despair…_

"There's one thing we still don't know, Henry."

"Yeah."

"Why he's doing this."

"Yeah."

I felt the answer hovering just out of reach.

* * *

"We should go."

"Yeah."

The spiral continued outside the door, going down further into whatever was coming for us.


	24. In the prison again 1

The trip down the spiral staircase this time was slow and gloomy. I was so lost in my own thoughts that I ended up lagging behind Eileen, for once. I didn't realize it until I heard her voice from far away…and below me.

"Henry...you're going too slowly."

It took me a moment or two to register it, since I'd heard her tell me I was going too fast so often that I didn't realize that the last word had changed. But whatever sense of urgency I'd had was gone now. I just couldn't get revved up for the next thing, because I knew what was going to happen.

_Next, we're going back to that damp, depressing concrete prison. The halls will be full of slugs and two-headed babies and seven-foot mushrooms, and Andrew will be floating around trying to kill us, and maybe if we're really, really lucky Walter will put another bullet into my leg or something. Or maybe I'll fall into the waterwheel somehow and get crushed in its gears. Who knows. There are so many different possibilities. Never mind what could happen to Eileen, before I get killed or after. There, or in the buildings that are going to come next, with Richard even more pissed off than usual...or maybe I'll manage to hold on until we get back to the bloody apartments. At least she'll know her way around them in case..._

Then, I had a little idea that gave me a small measure of comfort. If I couldn't keep her safe, then...

_She knows where I keep every weapon I'm carrying by now. _

She was standing way, way down the spiral from me, near the fork in the stairs that would lead to a Hole. Guess I really had been lagging behind. I should tell her now, before it was too late. I managed to speed up to a trot.

"I'll be right back," I said, as I got into the Hole.

"I know," she said simply.

* * *

The fridge was silent for a change. The cat's mewing had been replaced by the sound of water gushing from the sink. As I went to turn off the faucet, I stopped in mid-step and shrank back. The tap was on, but it wasn't water that was coming out...and a second after I saw it, I smelled it. Once you've smelled rivers of rotten blood, you'll never forget the odor. The particular stink this time told me that it was cold blood. I was almost tempted to twiddle the knobs and see if the faucet was running hot and cold blood, or just cold blood, but given the screaming pain through my temples, that wasn't an option.

I dumped off the extra crap I was carrying, including the torch. Everywhere we were going from now on would be either indoors or close to indoors, and I didn't remember any more wells on the way, so I wasn't likely to need it again. I replaced it with an extra box of ammo.

It was still night, which wasn't a big surprise. Still...I took a look out of the windows in my front room. I remembered the first time I'd seen this view, when Frank showed me the apartment over two years ago. It was daytime then, of course – you shouldn't ever suss out a place at night for the first time if you can avoid it, since there's a lot that you can't see at night – and during the day, the view was pleasant enough, if not spectacular. It looked like an ordinary block in an ordinary town, nothing special.

But at night...I loved the view at night. I remember spending the rest of that first night in my new apartment after I got back from the Southfield, wide awake, too tired and buzzed on beer to sleep, just looking out of the window at the neon signs and the people coming and going, and at my neighbors too. The colors of the neon made everything glow weirdly, and the shadows were as fascinating at night as the sunlight bouncing back and forth off of the walls of the building during the day. (Yeah, I'm easily amused. That's what happens when you're an only kid.)

But that wasn't all. Not by a long shot. It was also the first time I'd really been able to see how people lived their lives day to day. When I was growing up, my parents didn't have much social life, and I wasn't popular in school, so I didn't go over to other people's houses to visit much. I didn't really know how other people lived…how they spent their free time, what they ate and watched on TV, and all of that. I knew that it probably wasn't too different from what we ate and did and watched, but I had no idea. When I was in college, I spent my time in my room and with my camera and in the darkroom, so I hadn't gotten a feel for it then, either. Over the last two years, I'd learned that different people lived to different rhythms, and that "how other people lived" was far from being a fixed thing, that it really varied a lot from person to person. But what I saw out of my window was that life, as it went on day to day and year to year.

So, to me, nighttime from my window _was_ life, in a way. It was how I satisfied what little curiosity I had about the world outside of my apartment. Now, I went to the window not to learn but to lose myself in it, even if only for a moment. I wanted to remind myself what other people's evenings were like, to see that normalcy that I'd taken for granted for so long. They were all there, all but Richard, doing what they always did. TVs were on, records were spinning on turntables, kids were playing on bunks. People were eating late dinners and having drinks upstairs, same as any other night.

That was what I'd needed. It was just me and Eileen trapped in Walter's nightmare. The rest of the world would go on as it always had.

_And another thing. If she's number twenty, and I'm number twenty-one, that's it. He won't kill anyone else. Nobody has died in the subway and forest this time around...he didn't bring anybody else in. And if it's just us, nobody else has to die. They're all safe._

_...no, they're not. Don't forget, Henry. We still don't know __**why**__ he's doing this. What's going to happen after...this is all over? If he kills both of us, his plan succeeds...what happens then? We don't know if it would be the end…or just the beginning of something far larger and more terrible._

_No, it's not over. Not until we stop him. I have no idea how we're going to do it, but we have to figure it out and __**get it done.**_

And that was when my motivation came back. All of those people out there...any one of them could be next unless I got off of my ass and stopped feeling sorry for myself. Granted, if he went after them, that would mean that both Eileen and I would already be dead, so it wouldn't make a difference to me then, but somehow I knew that even in my zombified undead ghost brain it would piss me off on some level. Did I already mention that I'm a stubborn old coot? Just like my dad.

Back to the hole...and I had to talk to Eileen.

* * *

"Eileen?"

"Ready?"

"I am now. Look, I need to...to show you something." My hand went to my belt.

"I hope you don't try that on all the girls. Isn't going to work, Henry. Too creepy."

"I'm being serious. I told you earlier that I had a gun. Here it is. I keep it on the left side of my belt, remember?"

"Yeah, I remember..."

"Give me your hand. It's a little big for you, but not too big. Here's the safety...I've been keeping it off, but that's probably not a good idea if you're not used to shooting one."

"And you are?"

"Yeah. My father taught me how, when I was younger. Was never much good at it, though. I have a spare box of ammo in my left pocket."

"Henry...why are you telling me this?"

"Because you may need to know. The gun is the only thing I have that you might be able to use with one hand. The axe might work, but the gun is easier to use. I can't carry a lot of ammo all at once, but if you're careful you might be able to find enough out there to keep you going."

"...out there? Henry? Are you – you _can't_ leave me!"

The fear was back in her voice. One look at her told me that I'd sent her straight back into a state of panic. Good work, moron.

"No, no, oh hell...Eileen, no, I'm not going anywhere. Not if I can help it. But –"

Her good hand clutched my sleeve. "You _promised_ me!"

But, just like in the subway, I didn't have a choice. She had to know this.

"And that's a promise I intend to keep. But I have to be realistic, and so do you. We're both only human, and if something happens to me..."

Too late. She wasn't listening any more. Panic had taken over, and she had latched onto me and was shaking my arm back and forth violently. I tried to take her by the shoulders, but she threw me off and began to walk back up the steps to the spiral. She took one step, then another...

...and then something happened. Her skin was starting to look very weird, mottled with red and dark purple streaks. Now that she was facing away from me, I realized that the streaks were moving slowly on her skin, appearing and fading, all over her back and arms and legs. They weren't very dark yet, but whatever the hell was happening to her couldn't be good for her. This was getting serious.

Then, she wobbled a little. Her good hand groped for the railing, but it was too far away, and she was swiping at air. I hurried to her and just managed to catch her under the armpits as she sagged, and her head fell heavily against my shoulder. The little streaks were moving on her cheeks as well, and the last of my numbness evaporated as I watched them squirm and writhe.

After several seconds, she was pulling herself back up, out of my hands, shaking her head and looking around.

"What just happened?"

"I think you fainted or something. Eileen...have you looked at yourself?"

Her head drooped. "I know. Henry..." Her hand reached for my arm again, but this time she just stroked the sleeve of my shirt lightly, avoiding my eyes. "Remember what I told you back in the hospital? About being cursed?"

I nodded.

"I think that's what's happening to me. Don't worry," she added quickly. "It doesn't hurt, and I can still walk, but I'm just fading in and out a little. I don't know if I can do anything about it." She jerked her head at the gun, which was back in my belt and made a slight bulge under my shirt. "Keep that away from me for now. I don't know what would happen if I fell like that with the gun in my hand."

"I'm sorry I had to bring that up," I said. "I didn't want to upset you, but..."

"Lots of things upset me," she said shortly. "I have to get over that."

"But I just want you to know, in case something happens to me. You'll need to take the gun and the ammo and keep going."

"If something happens to you, I'm dead too." Her voice was flat.

"Not if you can fire this gun. Are you feeling better?"

"Yeah, I guess."

"Do something for me. Here." I moved behind her and put the gun into her hand, wrapping her cold fingers around it. "You need to know how to aim and shoot with it."

"Don't waste a bullet on this, Henry. There are more important – "

"_It's not a waste_. Your finger goes on the trigger. Like this. Now, point the gun at something...like that hanging body over there. Yeah, that one."

"Like this?"

"Exactly. Take your time to line up the shot. Remember, one good shot is worth umpteen misses."

"Got it."

"When you're ready, pull the trigger."

"Is it going to kick?"

"Not a lot, but some, yeah."

"Here goes."

_BAM!_ The gun did have a little kick, and I braced to catch it, but she held on firmly.

I squinted. Then, I moved out from behind her, and walked over to the dangling corpse I'd picked for target practice.

"You shot its glasses off."

"I did? Yeah!"

She sounded so gleeful that I couldn't help smiling. _At least she's going to be safe. Safer. _I stifled my sigh of relief, forced my face into a frown, crossed my arms and turned to her. "I'm disappointed, Eileen."

"Why?"

"I thought you'd try to blow its head off."

She shrugged. "Wanted to see how accurate I could be."

"You're doing fine."

"OK then. Take this thing. I don't want it." She dangled the pistol from her finger.

"Neither do I, but one of us has to carry it."

She shook her head. "Target practice on corpses. This is thoroughly twisted."

"Yeah. But what else are they good for now, anyway?" My turn to be the cheerful one.

"Scaring the bejeezus out of us."

"Not working like it used to, is it?"

"No."

"So." I stuck the pistol back into my belt. "You feeling better?"

"I guess. You?"

…_of course she noticed._

"Yeah."

* * *

The door at the end led to a small circular room. It was about the size of the guard rooms in the prison, but this one had no peepholes or desks or ladders. There was just the door, and a cylindrical wall in the middle with an opening. The wall looked like an elevator or something, and it was waiting for us.

"I wonder what could be down there," Eileen said as we inspected it.

"This is supposed to be the prison," I said. I pulled my notebook from my pocket, opened it to the map of the prison, and explained the layout of the place to her. She didn't seem happy when I described the long spiral stairs around the outside…until I described the only alternate ways of moving between the floors.

"Well, I guess they beat holes and ladders," she said as I put the notebook away.

"We're used to them by now, anyway."

"You haven't seen this room before?"

"No, but the proportions are familiar. I'd guess that if we're not in the prison, we'll be there soon enough."

"Great."

"After you."

The elevator was a tight squeeze for two people, but by this point being jammed together in a corner was a familiar feeling, at least metaphorically. The door of the elevator slid closed, and for a moment we were surrounded by close, silent blackness.

Then, it gave a jolt, and I grabbed for Eileen and pulled her to me to keep her from falling. "Well, hello there," she said with a smile that I could hear even in the dark. I smiled too. She leaned into me, and the elevator began to drop down.

I couldn't tell how fast we were moving, but it seemed to accelerate for a while before leveling out. The ride was long, but smooth, and eventually the elevator slowed and stopped. It was still for a moment, keeping us trapped in the dark, and then the door slid open. We were...

...in a room identical to the one we'd just left.

_Great_.

Wait...no, there was a Hole in the wall, and a door. So, similar, but not identical. The door was locked, and had that emblem on it again. Of course. There had been two locked doors in the prison with that emblem when I was there before, and the one in the basement had been two stories tall. It clearly wasn't this one. That left...

We opened the door and were on the roof. I was facing the double doors that led to the outer spiral staircase, and I could hear the water still moving through the sluice gates as I'd left it before. Nothing new there. What was different was Walter standing at the foot of the little steps in front of the door, smiling and pointing his gun at us. He was laughing again, and I _so_ wanted to grab that gun and shove it in his mouth and blow his goddamn smug face _away_...

I pushed past him to the door and started hauling it open as Eileen made her way down the stairs. A bullet zinged past my head as I shoved her through, but it didn't hit me.

The spiral was the same as it had been before. The ladders were still there, but since she couldn't climb down, they were useless to me too. Instead, we took off down the steps as fast as we could. Not a moment too soon, either, for after a second or two I heard the heavy doors open and close behind us. He followed us all the way around, taking potshots at us constantly to keep things interesting. Complicating things were the bird-bats that were snoozing happily on the walls. They were harmless then, but apparently once they caught sight of us, they decided that playing with us would be more fun than just hanging around. I didn't have to worry about getting too far ahead of Eileen, because killing the damn bird-bats before her arrival took long enough that she could catch up to me before I was done.

Just as we were nearing the doors to the third floor, I knew that we weren't alone. I turned around. Walter was standing right there, with that damn gun raised and pointed at my head.

"Hello again, Henry," he said quietly in that dreamlike voice.

I reached behind me to push Eileen toward the door, and started backing up toward it.

"Why are you doing this?" I asked, to buy some time. "What's the point? What do you expect to get out of this, anyway?"

He shook his head. "It's not about me," he said slowly. "It's for _him_."

"Him? Who?"

He laughed in my face. Even his breath didn't smell like anything.

"You'll see."

"Not yet, I won't," I said. I grabbed the handle of the door, yanked it open, and shoved both of us inside to the sound of Walter's cackling.

We were now on the third floor of the prison, of course. As I looked around, it occurred to me that just because the roof was as I left it didn't mean that everything else was. For example, the floors. What if Walter or somebody had been turning the wheels since I was there? The holes in the floors could be anywhere now, and that familiar sinking feeling crept in as I realized that I might have to go rearrange them all over again. Well, we had to find out sooner or later.

Moot point, as it turned out. The third floor was just as it had been before, actually, but for the few useful things littered around in the cells and the three double-headed babies in the hallway. I used up a few bullets when they double-teamed us (or is that quadruple-teamed?), but we got out cleanly.

Now, to figure out how to get the hell out of here.

It seemed to me that the most efficient way to go about all of this would be for me to find somewhere safe for Eileen to rest while I made the rounds. It would be best to have a look around on my own. Eileen had had a hard time keeping out of the way of the things in the narrow hallway...if we got stuck in a room with one, she'd get hurt no matter what I did. Also, the only way she could get around from floor to floor was on the stairs, and dragging her through more of that was the last thing either of us wanted to do. I could navigate the holes and ladders much more quickly by myself. I already had a good suspicion about where the exit would end up being, but it seemed pretty unlikely that we could just stroll down to the basement and get that two-story door open by ourselves. Nothing had been easy up to this point...why would this be any different?

So, I led her around to the one o'clock room with the hole to the basement, and sat her down on the bloody bed.

"Can you rest here for a while?" I asked her as she sat there, catching her breath. "I'll see if I can figure out the door downstairs."

"Probably a good idea. I'm sorry I'm such a load."

"You're not."

"It's OK. I know that I am. I'll stay here and be quiet."

"I know you don't like being left alone, but..."

"Go," she said. "I'll be OK. They can't get in through the doors, right?"

"I don't think they can. Hang on..." I grabbed the stool in the cell and pushed it up against the door. It wasn't much, but it might just slow them down a little. "If you get cornered, see if you can get down the hole in the floor. It will drop you into a cell on the second floor, and you can get away from them for a little that way." I hated the thought of her subjecting herself to a fall like that, but...

"I'll be OK. You get back quickly, OK?"

"I'll be back before you know it," I said, and squeezed her shoulder. She smiled up at me, and reached up for a hug, and then she watched quietly as I dropped down the hole.


	25. In the prison again 2

The kitchen was quiet, and Andrew's body was gone from the pool of toxic whatever. His blood still floated in its place, though, as if he had just disappeared a minute or two before. Spread out on the center platform where I'd puked my guts out into the water was something white. It was a shirt, a little white button-down shirt. Just like the little shirts that I'd found in the cells. It was so small...

I picked it up and shook it out. There was something hard and crusty on the back, distorting the fabric. It was like glue, or wax, and as I ran my fingers over it, it seemed to me that there was some kind of pattern to it. Whatever it was, I couldn't see it because it was invisible against the white fabric. It would have to wait until I came up with a way to see what it was. I tied the shirt to my belt, hacked through some mushrooms and made my way up to the first-floor guard room to have a look around.

Everything here was pretty much as I'd left it, just as I'd found on the third floor. I knew that it would be, since I'd been able to drop all of the way down without a hitch, but still it was worth checking out. Nothing much of note, though, so I headed up to the second floor. As soon as I took one look at the wheel that rotated the cells on that floor, I knew exactly why nothing had changed.

_The wheel's rusted into place. Solid. Won't be moving again any time soon._

Given all of the water dripping everywhere, it wasn't surprising that the wheel would have rusted...what was surprising was how quickly it had happened. How much time had passed since I'd been here last? Only a few hours, by my reckoning…but then, I had no idea how time actually ran here, so it could have been years for all I knew. But wouldn't Andrew's blood have been long gone after years? I never did figure out how that worked.

There was a small dark object off to one side on the third floor, about a foot long. It swung heavily from my hand when I picked it up, and the black leather surface shone in the harsh light of the guard room. It was a nightstick, or a leather sap, the kind that cops carried in old movies. These things could really cause some damage, I recalled. When I slapped it lightly against my palm, it hurt more than I'd expected, but made a satisfying _whap!_

"Who's there?" came a voice from one of the cells. Of course...I was about ten feet from Eileen at that point, but she had no idea that I was there.

"It's me," I called back. "I'm in the middle room."

"Oh, thank God."

I peered into the cell. She was looking up toward the hole, but she probably couldn't see my face from that angle. That's how the place was designed...the observation holes were high up in the walls, so that you could be seen, but you couldn't tell who was watching you. She looked just as she had when I'd left her in the cell.

"You OK?" I said.

"Yeah," she said. She looked around. "It's kind of damp and gross here, but at least I'm behind a door."

"Could be worse, huh?"

"Yeah, I guess so," she said, rubbing her arm for warmth.

"I found something. It's a nightstick. You know, like cops used to use."

"Really? Like in the movies?"

"Yeah. And this thing _hurts_."

"Mind if I…"

"It's all yours."

"Can you get it to me? Push it through the peephole?"

I lifted my head to see. "No. If I do, it'll go straight down the hole. I'll bring it back with me."

"OK."

"I'm going now. You hang in there."

"I will."

I headed back down the ladders, grabbed some bullets from the shower room, and found myself back out on the basement spiral stairs. The stairs were quiet this time around; the wall-men from before seemed to be taking the evening off. I wanted to head back downstairs, to the two-story door, but my pockets were nearly bursting at that point. Instead, I headed up the spiral, unlocked the door to the stairs (which hadn't been locked last time), and went through the Hole to dump stuff off.

* * *

Joseph had left me another note. Apparently, it was backstory time. You probably know all of this now – I'm sure that the papers ran it all in a sidebar or something – but I sure as hell didn't at the time. I had suspected that it was Walter who had been born in my room, but now I had confirmation. 

_That must have been the baby that Frank found. It was baby Walter. His parents just left him there...what did Frank say? "Ran off like thieves in the night"? Damn people shouldn't have had the baby in the first place, if they were going to do that...and especially if he was going to be left to the devices of that cult. If they hadn't done that to him, who knows...nineteen more people might be alive today, and Eileen would be out having a good time at her party with her friends and I'd be sitting on my couch by myself watching TV, same as every night, and neither of us would be just one step away from death. _

_But...he thinks that Room 302 __**is**__ his mother..._

That was the most bizarre thing I'd heard all day. I mean, he probably knew enough about the birds and the bees to know, really _know_, that there was no way that an apartment could give birth to a baby, but still he was fixated on my room...thanks to whoever in the cult told him where he was born. It had been a mistake, a huge mistake, to tell him that, but I could understand why someone would have. Poor kid had no past that he could use to figure himself out with, nothing he could tie himself to, nothing to help him understand where he'd come from and how he'd come to be. Nothing but a room in an apartment building miles away from his home. Still, that was a very long trip to make every weekend, by himself. Couldn't one of those cultists even be bothered to come along with him, to make sure that he was OK?

This was important, I knew. Very, very important.

Joseph cut off there. He had a terrible headache, he said, and that was something I could relate to too. He promised more in his next note, and I really hoped that he was going to live up to that. I'd try to figure it all out then.

As I walked away from the door, something caught me and pulled me back. I panicked for a moment before I realized that it was just the shirt that I had tied to my belt, the one I'd found in the basement of the prison, hung up on the doorknob. That reminded me that I had to figure out a way to read the thing.

I sat down on my storage chest and ran my fingers over the back of the shirt again. Waxy stuff on fabric...wax writing, maybe? It reminded me of something I'd read in a book of codes and ciphers I'd had when I was in junior high. It was a favorite book of mine. I spent hours back then with that book, playing around with pigpen ciphers and scytales and other systems. One of the chapters was about hidden and secret writing. People used to write things on fabric in stuff like lemon juice and wax, things that became invisible as they dried, so that you couldn't even tell that there was a message there at all. The person on the other end would scorch the paper to show the writing, if it was lemon juice, or it if was in wax they would...

_Soak it in a colored liquid!_

There was only one handy source of that...well, two, if you counted the green slime in the basement of the prison, but I wasn't going to be dunking my hands into that any time soon. I headed to the bathroom instead. I know what you're thinking, and no, I didn't do _that_. I dropped the shirt into the pool of blood in the bathtub, swished it around with the axe for a few seconds so it got thoroughly wet, and then pulled it out and hung it from the shower curtain bar. The writing showed up pinkish-white against the red of the blood-soaked cotton.

_My room is on the 2__nd__ floor and I had to drink something with black things in it.  
I hid the sword with the triangle handle under my bed.  
That guy, the fat one, took the basement key.  
Next time I'll stick this triangle sword into that pig and take the key._

I copied this down into my notebook and then took a minute to ponder it. OK, second floor, room with black things in it...and a sword under the bed. That rang some bells, and I knew exactly where I was going to have to go. And, if I was guessing correctly, I'd have to take down Andrew to get the key that would let us the hell out of here. Faaaan-tastic. Time to head back to see if I was right. I wiped my hands on a towel, rued the loss of my running water, and walked back down the hallway.

As I was about to throw myself into the Hole, I remembered something. I went back to my chest, dug around for a couple of seconds, and pulled out one of the two precious silver bullets. Just in case Andrew proved to be a pain...and judging from the fun we'd had already with Cynthia and Jasper, that was very likely to happen.

* * *

At least, I had a good idea where to go on the second floor. It was an even more popular hangout for the locals than the third floor had been, both the two-handed and the no-handed types, and I had to reload the pistol a couple of times to get through everything. Fortunately, the powers that be had made sure that I had plenty to reload with. 

The room I was looking for was near the double doors. Sure enough, the black canisters of powder (or whatever) were still on the table and bed in that room, right where I'd seen them last. I bent down and rummaged around under the bed, and nearly cut myself on the rusty blade. Whatever poor kid had left that note on his shirt had been reliable, at least. Sword, check. Silver bullet, check. Now, I was prepared for Andrew.

As I was standing there, looking at the sword in my hands, I felt…I felt as if I wasn't alone. I mean, I _knew_ that I wasn't. Eileen was upstairs, Walter was off doing whatever he was doing and there were inevitably things large and small out for our blood. But it was as if…it's hard to describe. As if the little kid who had lived in that cell and drank the black things in the jars and stashed the sword under the bed was _watching_ me. As if all of the little kids, the ones who had lived and died there and been pushed through the holes in the floors down to the butcher's room downstairs, were watching me and Eileen and waiting and…

I'm sorry. It's hard to talk about. It still chills my bones, even after everything else that happened. And I have to admit that I just wanted to get the hell out of there, away from their stares, whatever the _hell_ it was that they were waiting for me to do. I wanted to run, away from those invisible dead eyes, to leave those cells and their memories behind me forever. But, that wasn't an option, not yet. I slid the sword into my belt and gritted my teeth and forced myself to get on with it.

The first floor was quieter and emptier...of both good and bad things. That left the bottom of the spiral stairwell and the waterwheel room. I had to get them out of the way – and Andrew, too – before I tried to maneuver Eileen through there.

As soon as I opened the door to the downstairs staircase, I heard something strange. An eerie noise was floating up the hallway to me…a human voice, fading in and out. It was like singing, but without rhythm or joy...or much pitch, either. The voice was alone, so there was only one singer. There were mushrooms in my way again, but before I went any further I emptied out the pistol, loaded up the single silver bullet, and made a mental note to be _very_ careful with my next shot.

Patches of mushrooms. One, then another, waving at me. Axe time. Hack, hack, hack. The singing was becoming louder and more clear. The voice was definitely a man's, and he was singing about something I couldn't quite make out...singing listlessly and tunelessly.

I hacked through some more mushrooms and there he was, hovering in front of me. Andrew had lost his shirt somewhere along the line, and his dead white belly was hanging out bloated and bare, with the _**18 / 21**_ clear on his flesh. His hands were up, and his empty eye sockets stared at me with a deep sadness.

I felt terrible, absolutely terrible, for him, and for a second or two I just stood there, remembering who he'd been and wondering at what he'd become. Then, before I knew it, he was spinning toward me like a barrel. I got a faceful of cold undead white gut, and then I was flat on my back and my world had turned red.

_Henry, you know better than that by now. He's just like the others. You know what you have to do. Get on with it._

I took a couple of steps backward and pulled the pistol from my belt. Time to see if we'd been right about the silver bullets. I aimed carefully for his stomach and pulled the trigger.

_BAM!_

Andrew's expression changed abruptly from sadness to surprise, and he dropped like a stone. He ended up on the ground, as flat on his back as I had been a moment before, arms and legs up and wiggling uselessly like an upside-down turtle.

I walked right up to him with no problem, and stared down at him. That silver bullet was damn powerful. Took him right down. It was almost beautiful, in a way, how much easier it made things. Too bad I only had one left now...

_Sword, idiot!_

I'd almost forgotten. Out of my belt, up into the air, and _squish_ down into his belly. He shuddered and groaned, and then lay still, moaning softly. I bent down and pried his hand open, and pulled the little glimmering key from his palm. That was bad enough…but now that I think about it, I guess I should be grateful that I didn't have to go through the trousers of a dead man to find it.

His face turned to me, and his lips moved. No sound came out, of course, and I couldn't understand what he was trying to say.

_I'm sorry, Andrew. I really am. But I have to take care of the living for now._

The key read "Generator Room". It was time to go get Eileen and see if we could find our way out of this place.

* * *

Walter was nowhere to be found as I climbed the ladders outside the tower, but I can't say that I missed him at all. I could hear his gun going off in the distance, though, so he hadn't abandoned us completely. A few lonely mushrooms had sprouted in the third floor hallways, and a few more slugs crawled the walls, but those were easily taken care of, and I hurried to Eileen's cell. 

"It's just me," I called. I grabbed the doorknob and rattled it for a moment before I remembered the stool on the other side. "Can you open the door?"

No response.

"Eileen?"

Silence.

I poked my nose through the bars in the window. Eileen hadn't heard me, it seemed, for she was still sitting on the bloody bed, head in her hand. She was facing the peephole still, as if she hadn't moved since I'd talked to her from the guard room. From this angle, I could see the writhing red streaks on her skin…more of them than before. Many more.

_She's getting worse. That's it. I don't have a choice...I have to take her along as much as possible. I don't know if I can protect her from whatever's taken hold of her, but leaving her alone isn't helping. And I'm going to have to keep an eye on her, too._

I knocked on the door. Her head lifted, and she blinked at me.

"Eileen, it's me," I said. "I'm back."

"Henry...is it really you?"

"Yeah."

She blinked again, then hauled herself to her feet and moved to pull the stool away from the door. But as she bent down, she hesitated.

"Eileen?"

Her face was hidden by her hair, but I saw the red streaks on her back flare to black for a moment. Then, she was teetering on her heels, head back, flailing her arms in the air. Her head was turning from side to side, and her mouth was moving, but no sound was coming out. She was completely out of it. It was another of her fits – and I couldn't do a damn thing about it from here. I twisted and yanked on the doorknob, but the door wasn't going anywhere. I couldn't throw myself into the door, either, in case it burst open and knocked her into the hole.

"Eileen!" I yelled, but she was past hearing me. She tottered backward, first one step, then another, and soon she was one step away from a three-story plunge. _Oh God!_

"EILEEN!"

I stretched an arm through the bars, but she was just out of reach...then, the pain slammed into my head, and I saw red again. I flinched for a moment, and then gritted my teeth and stretched further into the room, but not far enough. She was just an inch or two out of reach, but it might as well have been a mile.

Then, her foot slipped backward, and her arm flew forward, and I reached in as far as I could and banged my head on the bars as I wrapped my fingers around her wrist and held on with everything I had. Her skin was burning hot. When I knew I had a good grip, I yanked forward hard, and she fell against the door, well away from the hole. Her wrist was still in my hand, and I pulled upward and held her up as her spasming slowed, then stopped. The pain in my head vanished, and everything was gray again.

Her head rose, and her eye met mine. It was angry and red, but she didn't seem to be angry at me. She struggled to get her feet underneath her.

"You can let go now," she said quietly.

I did so, and I heard the stool scrape against the floor. After a moment, the door opened. Her skin was back to its regular mottled red and pink, but she was shaking from head to toe. There were red marks on her wrist where I'd held her. I closed the door behind me. She held her arm out, and I took her in mine and held her tight as she turned her face into my neck and cried long and hard.

_It's getting worse_. That's all that was going through my mind. _It's getting worse. _I forgot about the key and Andrew and Walter and the two-story door, everything, everything but Eileen sobbing her eyes out against my neck and the clammy feel of her cold throbbing skin under my hands as I rubbed her back slowly.

_It's getting worse, and there's nothing I can do about it..._

I don't know how long we stood there like that. After a while, my shirt was soaked through below the collar on the right side, but I didn't care. I probably smelled pretty bad by then what with one thing and another, too, but she either couldn't tell or didn't care. Things like that hadn't been important in a long, long time. I wavered between a deep, wrenching pain at what was being done to this woman in my arms, and a blinding anger that made me want to put my fist through the wall, but I couldn't let her feel either, not then. Nothing to upset her any more.

Her shaking stopped eventually, and she ended up snuffling into my shoulder. I squeezed her again, and she lifted her face up. It was all puffy and red. She blinked at me once. I smiled at her and pushed her hair back off of her wet cheeks.

"Hey there," I said as gently as I could.

"I look like hell," she said.

"You look beautiful," I replied.

And she did, to me. I guess it was a measure of just how little the formalities mattered that I could bring myself to say that, and even more that she didn't bridle or shy away from me. She just smiled and wiped her eye with her good hand. No "my makeup is a mess", no explanations, no excuses. I've never felt as comfortable with anybody in my life as I did with her that night. Never. At least something good came out of all that. But I'm getting ahead of myself here.

"Did you find the way out?"

"Not yet, but I'm pretty sure I know where it is. And we should be able to get there now," I said. "Would you care to join me, Miss Galvin?"

She pulled herself upright, lifted her head, and smiled at me.

"I'd be honored, Mr. Townshend."

Eileen is just amazing, you know. I held out my elbow, she took it, and we walked side by side to the double doors. It was silly, yes, but remember, the rules didn't seem to apply any more. They hadn't in a long time. Why should they apply to us?


	26. In the prison again 3

Walter was back out on the spiral. That meant more hurrying, more hacking at bird-bats, and more dodging bullets...the usual routine. Still, routine didn't mean safe, and I was bleeding again by the time we got to the little room on the first floor from one through the thigh and a nick on the arm. Nothing major, but they added up after a while. But it wasn't all bad, I guess. There was a funny moment when I came around the arc and saw him standing there, a floor above me, shooting...not at me or at Eileen, but at the damn bird-bats. Guess they even bugged him, too.

Luckily, this time the walls in the Hole room were free of their usual slug population, and I leaned back against one as Eileen grabbed the brown bottle sitting on the floor beside the Hole and brought it to me. _Very kind of her_.

"You left this here?"

"Thought that might come in handy," I said, feeling the warmth begin to spread through me.

"Looks like it did," she said. "You OK?"

"Yeah, just give me a minute," I said. I closed my eyes for just a little.

"While we're waiting," Eileen said, "I had a few thoughts while I was upstairs. About everything. Interested?"

"Shoot."

I heard her lean back against the wall, next to me.

"I was thinking about what you asked Walter...why. We still don't know why he's doing all of this, right?"

"Right."

"So, I was trying to look at what we know that we hadn't used yet. I don't know what you know, but maybe I could figure out something. I ended up thinking about little Walter. He's got to be Walter Sullivan, right? He said he was."

"Yeah. He did. They're the same person," I replied. I could see the little kid's face in my mind as if he was standing in front of me again. "We've never seen them together...maybe he's changing from one to the other or something."

"That's not possible, Henry. I _have_ seen them together."

That made me open my eyes. Then, I remembered when that would have happened.

"He stopped him," she continued. "He stopped him from killing me. Little Walter. I was lying there on the floor, waiting for him to finish me off, and then this little boy just appeared in front of me. He was just standing there, staring at me. Then, he looked up at Walter, and," she said with a shake of her head, "I've never seen a little kid so mad in my life."

I laughed.

"Then, he just pointed at the door, and I heard Walter leave. It was right before you came in, I guess. I don't remember that. I'm sorry."

"It's OK. But you said he stopped Walter...any idea why?"

"I don't know. Did anybody else say anything about him? When they..."

"No. Cynthia and Jasper didn't. Andrew knew him, from the orphanage, but he died before I had a chance to find out more. Richard saw him in an elevator, in the buildings, but...wait."

"What?"

I could smell the smoke again, the ozone, the frying flesh…

"He was there, when Richard died. He was standing behind him, pointing out of the window, and Richard told me that he wasn't a kid. He was the 11121 man. I didn't know what that meant until a little while ago."

"So Richard knew that he was Walter Sullivan."

"Seems like it, but I don't know how he knew. But here's the clincher. When I went to Richard's room next, Walter was still there, pointing out of the window. But this time, it wasn't the little Walter...it was the man in the coat." I couldn't bring myself to tell her that he'd been pointing at _her_ window.

She turned to look at me. "They're not the same person. Well, they _are_, but one doesn't change into the other. So that isn't it."

"Walter did say," I said, shifting my weight as the wrigglings in my thigh finished their repair work, "that he was doing this for _him_. Did he mean, for little Walter?"

"Must have. Who else does Walter care about?"

"You."

"Yeah. Me. At least, little Walter did. Big Walter sees me as..."

We both realized it at once. "Mother," we said in unison.

No, not only the twentieth sacrament. We knew that already. This was bigger than that…much bigger. What was the name of the ritual? _The 21 Sacraments for the Descent of the Holy Mother._ Literally. He wanted his mother, didn't he? Yes. That's what the writing said. _And in the deepest part of his kingdom is his Mother._

I told her about the writing on the wall of my laundry room, that had been there before the new Hole opened. She nodded.

"When I was little," Eileen said, "my parents took me to church every week. I was way too young to understand any of it, but they took me anyway. In the front foyer was a niche with a figure of the Virgin, and she looked like my mother. I didn't understand then that there were many, many mothers in the world. I just thought there was the one, and that somehow everybody had the same mother. My mother was the mother of God too, and there was a statue of her at church. It made me feel really good. I'd look at that statue and think about it. I thought that was pretty neat."

"Are you going where I think you're going with this?"

"He did the Ritual, right? The one for the 'Descent of the Holy Mother'? Why would he do this? Why else would he go through all this hell and _kill himself_?"

"Cult people are devoted, by definition, but that's above and beyond. He had to think he was getting something more than that out of this. He had to be getting something for himself, too. Something personal."

"Had to be important."

I nodded. "Mom."

Light was streaming through the grates high on the wall, gray and misty, and I could hear the wind blowing past outside the little room. I thought about my own mother. It had been a long time since I'd talked to her last. I don't even remember what we'd talked about. Whatever it was about, it probably ended awkwardly. Our conversations usually did. Our relationship was ultimately a lot of water that hadn't quite made it under the bridge yet. Plenty of fault on both sides, of course. It was so complex and screwed up that I didn't know if it could ever be straightened out. But here was Walter, who had taken the subway for hours each weekend just to stand outside a door in an apartment building in hopes of being able to glimpse a mother that he knew deep down didn't really exist. That little kid had grown into a man who would have done anything to get his mother back...and that's exactly what he had done, it seemed. Or was in the process of doing.

A boy and his mother. He'd do anything for her. He'd even killed himself just so he could bring her back. Food for thought.

For later.

"You said that you found something for me," she said hopefully.

I stared at her for a moment, then remembered and reached to my belt. "This looked like it might be your sort of thing," I said, handing over the nightstick. She weighed it in her hand, then swung it a few times.

"Definitely."

Just then, a slug decided to make its entrance. It slithered through one of the grates onto the opposite wall. It was a big, fat one, and Eileen and I watched for several seconds as it made its slimy way along.

"Whatcha think?"

I shrugged. "Go for it."

She hobbled over to the slug and watched it move toward her. As it drew closer, she lifted the nightstick and slammed it down straight across the slug's back. The thing fell to the floor and wriggled. But there was no way that she could stomp it to death with those little heels of hers.

"You need me to?"

"No. I've got it."

"But – your shoe – "

Her shoe was down through the slug before I could finish, and slug ooze splashed up all over her foot. She looked down slowly, and examined the slime that stuck wetly to her skin. That shoe was ruined now, if it hadn't been before anyway.

"Doesn't it sting?" I asked.

"No, actually," she replied. "It's just nasty."

She put her foot down again, and the stuff squelched out from the exposed sole and under her instep. Then, she grinned.

"That was really disgusting," she said. "But dammit, if I'm going to have to deal with all of this crap, I'm going to get to stomp on slugs too."

* * *

"What about Andrew?" she asked as I opened the door to the stairwell. 

"Out of commission," I replied.

He was still writhing when we passed him by, moaning and turning his head from side to side. Eileen stared down at him for a moment, then turned away and kept moving. We ran into some more mushrooms, and she took them out pretty effectively with her new nightstick.

"Wow," Eileen said when she caught sight of the waterwheel. "That thing's huge." She walked to the edge of the wall around it, and stood under the spray and watched it go around and around. I scanned the area for bird-bats, but it seemed clear, so I joined her there. The spray was cool and refreshing, and she turned her face up to it and closed her eyes.

Then, this long thing dropped down from the ceiling and hung there right in front of us. It looked like the worm-tube that we'd seen in the subway, and dangled there purple and throbbing. It wiggled around for a little while, and then a second one popped up from the pool of water and swayed back and forth for a few seconds before dropping back down. We watched them for several seconds, as they moved around and popped up and disappeared randomly.

Eileen shifted next to me. She seemed upset somehow...her mouth was constricted and her eye was huge. Then, she sensed me looking at her, and turned to me. Her lips quivered, and I thought she was about to cry, but then I looked in her eye again and realized that she was...

The look on my face must have done it. She burst out laughing right there.

"What's so funny?" I asked.

She stared at me for a moment, and then she lost it completely. Tears were running down her cheeks, and she bent forward and gripped the short wall and started howling with laughter and gasping for breath. She ended up coughing so hard that I had to smack her on the back, and after several seconds she managed to stand up again, wiping the moisture from her eyes and gasping again. What the _hell_ could possibly be that amusing?

"Oh my God," she said. "Oh my God."

"What is so damn funny?" I was completely baffled.

"What, you don't see it? _Look_ at the thing." She grabbed my arm and jerked her head in the direction of the hanging monstrosity. I obediently looked. It was long, and pale, and rippling, with purple and red lines along its length. It ended in a conical or egg-shaped tip, with a little hole in the end and a line along the...

_Oh._

_OH._

I felt my cheeks go from zero to burning in five seconds, and I knew that I was probably beet red from head to toe. Eileen saw this and started laughing again, and this time all I could do was stand there like an idiot. I didn't know where to look, but wherever it was it sure as hell _wasn't_ going to be at that enormous _thing_ waggling at me as if it had something to say. Despite everything that had happened up to that point…well, that stuff still got to me.

Eileen took pity on me and squeezed my arm. "Henry, I'm sorry," she gasped between laughs. "But...well, I guess when you're as big a momma's boy as Walter is...you've gotta have issues. You know."

_No kidding._

But what got me was...well, I couldn't help but wonder whether Walter was trying to get into my head just a little. I really don't want to talk about this. But I guess I don't have a choice. I'm being as honest as I can with you, here. It's too easy to blame my father for everything that went wrong in our family, and I'm well past the age where that would be even a feeble excuse, but one thing that really has stayed with me is what he used to say to me when I did badly at the shooting range, or couldn't do a hundred push-ups, or whatever crap he wanted me to do that day to see if he could break through what he called my "artsy-fartsy wussy bullshit" to turn me into a good little soldier. "You're"...

This is tough.

He'd say, "You're never going to be a man. You're nothing but a useless pussy." Or, "God, you're girly. Do you have to sit down when you pee?" He said other things, too, things that I really don't want to talk about here. He did that, and I swallowed it because I wasn't old enough or big enough to do anything about it when I was younger, and when I was older and bigger he could still turn me into that little kid just by calling me girly. It always seemed to work, no matter what, and I hated it. Hated him for doing it, and as I grew older I came to hate myself for letting it get to me.

One day when I was in high school, I came home from school to find a heavy rope tied to a branch of the biggest tree in the back yard, and a note on my bed.

_Climb._

That was his way of telling me that he'd be watching, and that I'd better do damn well or I'd hear about it after dinner. So I dropped my books off in my room, changed into my gray sweats that I always wore for these events and that I'd grown to hate too, walked out into the back yard and dutifully tried to climb. For once, it actually worked. I was fifteen by then, and I hadn't filled out yet, but I'd gotten big enough and strong enough to haul myself up the rope, and after a lot of huffing and puffing and gritting of teeth I managed to pull myself up onto the branch and sit down on it. Yeah, I was just as surprised as you probably are. I caught my breath, surveyed the view from up there (it was amazing), and spent a minute or two just feeling what it was like to be sitting in a tree that far above the ground. It was almost like flying. Then, I turned to the dark window of his study, and yelled at the top of my lungs, not caring who heard me.

"ARE YOU HAPPY NOW?"

I stared daggers at the window for a few seconds, because I knew that he was watching as surely as he knew that I was sweating buckets. Then, I took a deep breath, lowered myself from the branch, and climbed back down the way I'd come. Could have just jumped down a few branches and dropped down and rolled, or gone down the trunk, but I had a point to prove.

That night, he was silent over dinner. Mom was nervous, but I just pretended that I didn't notice and had myself a double helping of lasagna. Climbing ropes is hard work, after all. I had won that battle, if not the war, and I knew that there was nothing he could do about it. I thought that he resented my doing what he'd challenged me to do, because I figured that he'd given up on me going into the military a long time ago and was now just torturing me on principle. I didn't know any better back then.

At the end of the meal, he stood up and folded his napkin and placed it on the table as usual. That was usually the signal for all three of us to clear the table, but that night I just leaned back in my chair, reached over to the lasagna dish and helped myself to an extra big forkful of cheese. I took my time rolling it around in my mouth. Mom's lasagna had always been one of my favorites, and I knew that she'd made it just for me that night. It had never tasted better. He watched me as I chewed and swallowed, and then I stood and folded my napkin just like he had and laid it next to my plate, just like he had.

He fixed me with his eyes, and for once I stared back just as fiercely. We were the same height by then, so I looked neither up nor down, just across. I heard Mom clearing the dishes, her glossy black head moving well below our mutual eye level, and soon she was gone into the kitchen and we were alone at the table.

He lifted his head, and raised his eyebrow. Then, he turned and began to walk away. He stopped after a few steps, though, and turned his head just far enough to say in his best gruff voice:

"I see that there's a dick down there to go with those balls. Careful, Henry, or you might just lose it one of these days."

He left the room then, leaving me as confused as I'd ever been. I realized much later that that was his way of showing his respect for what I'd done, by climbing the rope and by standing up to him, but that was years later. All I knew was that a couple of months after that he was gone, and Mom and I were left alone, and I knew deep down that it was because I hadn't been man enough to be his son.

So that thing bobbing up and down in front of me, insanely huge as it was, was getting into my head for reasons that are probably pretty clear but which I couldn't articulate then and still can't now. Then, my blood ran cold as the obvious question finally came to me. _Did Walter know?_ About...all of that? Was this here just to mess with my head? How could he have, though? Maybe I'd better not worry about that yet...

I don't know if any of that makes sense. I'm sorry. That was more about me than you probably wanted to know. It doesn't matter, anyway. Probably just me being paranoid. But after what I learned later…

Eileen was pulling at my sleeve. "Henry? Are you OK?"

I shook myself out of it. "Yeah, I'm fine. Sorry."

"I'm sorry too," she said, and I could hear it in her voice. "I didn't know you were so...shy about these things. I should have guessed."

"What's that supposed to mean?" I said, before I could stop myself.

She looked at me oddly. "Nothing, Henry, nothing. Just that...well, you're not like other guys. You're not always thinking about...you know."

No, I wasn't. I prided myself on that. That wasn't who I was. My ego was never going to live in my pants, never. It was my way of turning what he hated about me around and shoving it in his face, I guess. Metaphorically.

"I'm glad," she said. "I feel safe with you." I shouldn't have felt a little disappointed when I heard that, but I did anyway. Whatever. We had other things to worry about. I opened the door to the generator room and ushered her through.

* * *

The enormous generator was still there, humming and whirring now. But the huge door was far off in the distance now, further away than before, and down the long hall between here and there were... 

"How many?" Eileen said, squinting.

"Looks like six," I said. "You've still got that nightstick?"

"Armed and ready," she said.

"Good. We may get swarmed, and you saw just how fast those things move."

"Fastest hands in the undead world."

Right now, all six of them were just standing there, pointing at us. I heard them whispering to us... "Receiver...Receiver..." _Yeah, that's me. Come and get it._ Childish as it was, I wasn't about to let this place get to me any more than absolutely necessary.

"Stay back," I said to Eileen. "I'll do what I can, but if they get past me hopefully you won't get mobbed."

"OK," she said. "Don't worry about me."

"I do anyway."

"I know."

Then I stepped forward, and they rumbled toward me...and I lifted the pistol and started shooting. I'd found out while I was cleaning out things upstairs that if you got just the right angle, you could hit two of them with one bullet, and so I shot carefully and took a few hits, but managed to save a lot of ammo. The problem was getting to them in time to stomp them to death. You'd knock down two, stomp one, and the other one would be back up in your face before you could do the same to it. That was the more painful part of the process.

At one point, two of them shoved past me and set off toward Eileen. I fired as rapidly as I could, but they kept going. Another bullet or two would do the job, but I didn't have that kind of time. Eileen couldn't limp fast enough to get out of the way. "DUCK!" I yelled. She did, and one moved in front of the other, and I thanked God and dropped them with two shots. She stomped one as I stomped the other, and then we looked around for the next...

...and there were none. Six bodies lay at our feet. It was done.

Eileen took one look at me and shoved her hand into my pocket and grabbed the first-aid kit I'd found just outside by the Hole by the wheel. I stared at it for a moment before I realized that I was about to fall over. She popped it open and went to work, and soon I was patched up and good to go again.

"Door," she said, pointing. We were the ultimate masters of the obvious by then.

"Door. Let's get out of here."

This time, the door was actually smallish, and the hall tapered down to it so that the ceiling was barely two feet above my head. It opened readily, and we were back out on the spiral.

We stared out over the foggy gray expanse suspended in the middle of time and space.

"They kept little kids there, didn't they?" she asked. She knew the answer, but I nodded anyway.

"Yeah."

"Could you feel them there, too? In the cells?"

"Yeah." _Guess I'm not the only one._

She put her hand on my back and rubbed it in circles...God only knows how she knew, but yeah, I needed that just then.

After a while, I put my arm around her shoulders. I squeezed a little, and she turned to me.

"You going to be OK?" she asked.

"Yeah. You?"

"Yeah. Let's do this thing."

I couldn't help grinning. She was really unstoppable. "Yeah."

We walked down the stairs, side by side.


	27. The buildings again 1

The Hole was there as usual, two-thirds of the way down the spiral. By this time, it didn't provoke much of a reaction in me any more. Not much did. On the other hand, predictability has its advantages. As I climbed into the Hole, it occurred to me that a little more of it would be very handy at the moment.

"Don't forget," Eileen said.

"Hm?"

"Richard."

No, I'd better not forget about Richard.

* * *

As soon as I woke up, though, that near-blinding pain shot through my skull.

_Dammit!_

I opened my eyes to red everywhere. Something was nearby and I had to get the hell away from it. I hurled myself forward and rolled over the end of the bed to the floor. Banged my arm on the chair, too, which didn't help, but the red pain went away...so whatever was causing it was in the opposite corner of the room.

I peered over the blanket. My closet was dark, as usual at this time of night, but my bedside lamp was on, and I could see more darkness inside the space than there should have been. It resolved itself into a shadow, a human shadow...a little shadow, only a few feet tall. It was the shadow of a little kid…a shadow that looked a lot like little Walter.

I got up slowly and kept my eyes on it. It didn't move from that spot, but just stood there by my box of random junk, moaning and crying. It didn't seem as if it wanted to hurt me, but it was anyway. I fished a candle out of my pocket and...crap, I'd given my lighter to Eileen back in the forest. She still had it. There was another one in the laundry room, maybe.

The screaming babies were back. But they weren't an immediate threat, since I could lift the lid of my chest from the side and root around in it from there, so I didn't worry about them too much. I just tried my best to block them out and headed for the laundry room.

There was nothing new under the front door, but something was missing. I couldn't figure out what. It took me a few seconds to realize that my knockaround shoes, the ones I kept by the door to take out the trash and get the mail, weren't there any more. There were red footprints on the carpet leading away from the door...and then I saw that the shoes had _walked themselves into the kitchen_ and were now facing the stove, right where I usually stood on those rare occasions when I actually used it.

Now, this was getting completely out of control. It would take at least three candles to get rid of everything, and I didn't know if I'd have enough to clean up all of this mess. I'd have to be careful with them. But, if I only eliminated the ones that I couldn't avoid, like the shadow by my bed, then I might have enough to get through this. I grabbed the old plastic lighter from my toolbox in the laundry room, and went back down the hall and lit the candle by the closet. It took almost the whole candle to get rid of the shadow, but then it was gone and I could breathe a little more easily.

As I watched it burn, another reason to conserve candles occurred to me. They seemed to work against these hauntings, and they were supposed to be effective against the ghosts...why wouldn't they work on Eileen? If and when she had another of her fits? I mean, the effects of her fits on me were the same as for the ghosts and hauntings – the same headache and red-eye – so maybe the candles would help her, too.

I slid my arm under the lid of the chest from the hallway side, dumped off things I didn't need, and pulled out not only another candle, but the second silver bullet and the spare sword that I'd found in the subway hours ago. Because Richard would be waiting for me, and I wanted to be armed and ready.

* * *

The door at the end of the spiral was the same as before. The spiral itself was the same as before...nothing new. That was good, right?

"Are you ready for this?" I asked Eileen as I turned the knob. Her skin hadn't gotten visibly worse recently, but that didn't mean that she was good to go.

"As ready as I'll ever be," she said. "You?"

"Same."

The door opened onto a flat concrete space, just like every other flat concrete space I'd come across the last time through. But I didn't remember this one right away. There was an old station wagon parked to the left, and a fence surrounded the edges of the space, with a break leading to an elevator on the right. An elevator...maybe this was on one of the elevator routes I'd used before, on the middle floor where I hadn't been able to get the doors open. Hope that didn't mean that we were going to be stuck here. On second thought, no, that didn't seem likely. There was always a way out. One way or another. Walter was making sure of that.

There was also a small white note lying in the middle of the space. The handwriting on it was an adult's, but the words were those of a kid.

_I want to go back to that time...  
Things were so good then...  
The day of my birthday...  
The cute cat in the pet store...  
All those balls in the basket...  
Playing pool was fun too...  
The door of time was wide open...  
When I see four things,  
I can't help but remember that time..._

The usual feeling of familiarity ran through me. Birthdays...the door of time...this was telling me something, again.

"Henry!"

One of the many things I realized that night is how rarely people threatened by something look _up._ They look in front of themselves, and then to the sides, and then behind, and down, but almost never upward. I guess that if you live your life in buildings and houses, there's no reason to do so. Almost everything approaches and leaves horizontally. But in these buildings, _up_ was where you had to watch out for the most, if that makes any sense.

Floating down from far above us was a dark figure with short, receding hair, and a striped shirt and obnoxious tie. Who else could it have been? Richard no longer had his gun, of course, but he had found a crowbar somewhere and my guess was that he was planning on making us very familiar with it.

"Get back, Eileen," I called, and pulled the gun from my belt. I emptied its bullets into my hand, shoved them into my pocket, and loaded up the single silver bullet. This was it...there were no more after this. I'd better make it count.

He touched down and began to walk toward me, swinging his pipe and jabbering at me in some low growl that I couldn't make out. He was like a blur. I pointed the pistol at his chest and pulled the trigger...and he disappeared.

_Son of a bitch!_

Fortunately, I hadn't pulled far enough to fire, and the bullet was still in the gun. I'd have another chance...hopefully.

"Behind you!" Eileen called, and I swung around just in time to get a faceful of crowbar. Red covered my vision, from the headache I had being that close to him and from the spray of my own blood, and I staggered. Before I could recover, Richard swung again. I heard my bones give way with a _crunch_ before I felt it, but somehow I managed to get the gun up under his chin and pull the trigger quickly. Richard gurgled in surprise and dropped to the ground, just like Andrew had, and growled as I fumbled for the sword and lifted it into the air. When it connected with his chest, he screamed and spasmed, and then just lay there twitching. He was down for good.

I tried to take a deep breath, but the feeling and sound of my shattered bones grinding loosely in my face was indescribable. I ended up on my hands and knees somehow, listening to Eileen's footsteps hurrying away across the concrete. My eyes were closed, but off in the distance I could hear the familiar sound of a seal breaking on the top of a bottle.

Then, she was on the ground next to me, lifting my head onto her leg and carefully parting my lips. The sludge flowed down my throat, about a third of a bottle of it, and went to work immediately. She held my head and stroked my hair away from my face as my bones reknitted themselves into their former shape. It felt as if a spider was weaving a web in my cheek.

I opened my eyes, and she smiled down at me. Where had she found the bottle, anyway?

"Wh..."

"Shhh," she whispered. "No talking for a little, OK?"

I closed my eyes again and lay there listening to Richard's moans and cries and feeling her soothing hand on my hair. It was very surreal...it all was, but being able to give myself into her care while lying next to my recently undead neighbor was beyond weird. My hand fumbled for the bunch of bullets in my pocket, and as I lay there I reloaded the gun and stuck it back into my belt.

"That's it for the silver bullets, right?" Eileen asked. "You're all out?"

"Mmm-hmm."

"But that's all of the…victims so far from today. So hopefully, not too many more will bug us."

"Mmm-hmm."

I felt her shift above me. "How are you feeling?"

"Better," I said carefully through my teeth. The pain was gone, and I couldn't feel things moving around any more. I opened my mouth further. No problem. Her fingers were on my face, softly poking and prodding at the cheekbone. It felt so good...I saw no reason not to tilt my head back and smile up at her face hovering up above mine and say, "Better." It felt good to be able to smile, too.

"Good," she said, smiling right back.

I must have been feeling light-headed, because the next thing I knew, my hand was up at her face, and I was touching the purple bruise on her cheek. She didn't flinch, but stared at me in surprise, and as soon as I realized what I was doing, I dropped the hand.

"It's OK," she said. "It doesn't hurt."

I knew that she was lying, of course, but that didn't matter then either. There wasn't a lot that either of us could do to help her. I shifted my eyes to the wall behind her, and saw familiar neon signs above us, and a long metal stairway winding its way down the building behind her...and then I remembered seeing this area from above before, and I knew where we were.

* * *

The elevator was familiar, and deserted. I took the opportunity to show her my map of the buildings, and did my best to explain the convoluted array of rooms and corridors and stairwells and...

"Ladders?" she said, pointing to the little "III" marks I'd made on either side of the shower room at the bottom of the elevator.

"Yeah," I said. "Ladders. Sorry."

"Great."

"Hey, _I _didn't design the place."

"Any idea where we're supposed to end up?"

I thought for a minute, then handed her the note I'd found outside. "I'm guessing that the 'door of time' is going to be important." I flipped through the pages of the building map and pointed to the page that I'd labeled "B8", in an attempt to keep track of all the different levels. That was where the upside-down room had ended up.

"Here," I said, pointing to the locked door on the other side of the room. "This door had a clock on it. The clock wasn't running, but I'm getting the feeling that that is going to need to change."

"Any idea what's on the other side of the door?"

"No idea. Might be another exit. The only other way out that I know of is this stairwell here," and I pointed to the Bar Southfield on B15. "It only went up last time, but..."

"But what?"

"Ever Downward, right? Maybe what went up last time..."

"Now will go down. Got it."

"There were stairs downward here, but they were damaged before. They'd fallen through. I could only go up."

"And can we get there?"

"I can. You can't."

"Ladders?"

"Ladders."

"The door of time it is."

"Looks like it. Still, I'll need to check down there, past the ladders."

"I know."

"You're going to have to stay here. You should be safe for now. As far as I know nothing out there can figure out the elevator call buttons. I'll come back as soon as I can."

"I know."

"I'm sorry. There's nothing I can do."

"Yes, there is."

"What?"

"Give me a hug. Please."

"That, I can do."

* * *

We rode the elevator down to the bottom floor. Before heading down the ladder, I took her through the doors on the opposite side, the area from where I'd shot the dogs last time. There was a candle lying there now.

"Aren't you going to pick it up?" Eileen asked.

I shook my head. "Not yet. I'll leave it here and get it when I come back."

"OK."

_Should I tell her?_

"Eileen? I think...I think the candles might help you out."

"Help me out?"

"Yeah. When...you know."

"How?"

"Remember when I gave you the lighter, by the orphanage? You were going to light the candle if a ghost came by. It seems to do something to them, to hurt them."

"Right."

"I think that...whatever's happening to you might be related to the ghosts. Maybe the candle could help get it out of you."

"And you want to wait to see if I throw another fit?"

"Yeah. It will probably do the most good then, if all of this works like I think it does."

"But that's not going to help if I'm by myself. I won't be able to light it." Her voice was rising again. She was terrified of being alone, absolutely terrified. I put my arm around her shoulders, and she reached around my waist and pulled me close.

"I know. That's why I'll be back as soon as I can. Over there," I said, pointing to the other side of the fence, "is where I'll be going in a minute or two to get down to the Southfield. You remember the Southfield, right?"

"Yeah. Good beer."

I was getting to like her more and more. "Very good beer. That's the way to the stairs. We're going to find a way to get you either through the door of time, or down those stairs. One way or another. And I'll be back before you know it."

I knew that wasn't strictly true, and so did she, but again that didn't matter just then. She watched me as I climbed down the ladder and disappeared from her view.

* * *

There were slugs in the shower room, and mushrooms, which made sense given the dampness of the place. Neither posed a problem. I found a small white ball in the corner of the hallway leading to the stairs up and out of there. It was smooth and hard and heavy, and I nearly dropped it, but it took only a second to realize what it was. It was a billiard ball...the white one, which made it the cue ball.

_Somewhere out there, there's a set of billiard balls missing its cue ball. Too bad. Can't play a game of pool without it..._

_A game of pool._

I pulled the note out again. A game of pool...somebody missed being able to play pool. It was just a memory. This whole world, like the others, felt like a world from a dream...but perhaps, it was a world of memory...

_That explains a lot...the old phones and machines in the subway, the ancient office furniture here and in the prison...the huge waterwheel and door! It wasn't that they were too big...it was that I was too small. That's what they would have looked like if I'd been smaller, like..._

_Like...a boy of six. Decades ago._

_I'm inside Walter's memories. Or somebody's, but probably his. No wonder this place is so damn confusing...if I were a little kid, I'd get all these stairwells and rooms confused too. _

I pocketed the cue ball. My next step was obvious. There was an old pool table in the Southfield, and if I was right it was short one cue ball.

The corridor outside of the Chinese restaurants was relatively uninhabited, if not quiet. Just a couple of bird-bats fluttering around, no big deal. The screams and shrieks were easily ignored...probably too easily, but I didn't really care at the time.I was just happy to get through there without having to hack my way through.

But as I rounded the corner before the fence, I stopped short. In the storefront next to the fence by the elevators, two figures were standing face to face amidst the old boxes and dusty counters…two people I'd never thought I'd see in the same place at the same time. There was a thick glass window between them and me, but somehow I was able to hear them as clearly as if I'd been in the room. I just stood there and watched as big Walter stood facing little Walter with an expression on his face that I couldn't read.

Little Walter was mad about something. He clenched his little fists and glared up at the bloody coat and the man in it.

"I'm going to see my mom!" he yelled at the top of his lungs in his gravelly high voice. "Stay outta my way! Who _are_ you, anyway?"

Big Walter just stood there looking down at his younger self, with his arms crossed over his chest. "My name's Walter. Walter Sullivan." That damn smile of his was infuriating after a while.

No, it hadn't taken a while. It had been infuriating from the start.

"It's time to complete the twenty-one sacraments."

Little Walter was puzzled, of course. "But that's _my_ name...and what are the...twenty-one sacraments?" Unfamiliar words to him, at that age.

"Don't worry. You'll know soon enough. Soon, you'll see everything. Everything." Thank God little Walter was too young to know that he should have been completely freaked out by that. I know that my stomach was turning.

Then he bent down further, until he was nearly face to face with the little boy.

"Well," he said, "let's go and see Mother!"

He grabbed the little body around the waist and tucked him under his arm and carried him off, with little Walter kicking and screaming bloody murder all the way. I ran to the window, but the door was locked. I wouldn't be able to get through without smashing the glass and probably cutting myself pretty badly. The point was moot, anyway...they were gone. Gone to see Mother. It sounded almost Hitchcockian...

_Shit! Eileen!_

I ran the few steps to the fence and was about to call to Eileen to warn her when I stopped myself. What good would that do? They'd surely hear me and then they'd know exactly where she was. And warning her wouldn't do anything except frighten her more. If they came for her, there was nothing she could do about it. No, it was best if she sat tight in the elevator. If I could get where I needed to go and back fast enough, then the risk to her would be minimized.

I turned and hurried down the passage to where the apes had been before, axe at the ready, but the area was empty now but for a volleyball by the door and a Saint Medallion. Now I had a billiard ball and a volleyball. One was going to the Southfield, and it didn't take much thought to figure out where the other one should go.

Down the stairs on the other side of the door was the room with the huge fan. Before, it had been empty, but a clanking and rattling told me that my old four-wheeled friends from the hospital were back. There were five of them, actually, spinning and turning around. I was long past the point where I'd put any effort into trying to figure out what a bunch of wheelchairs was doing in an empty room in a building maze, of course.

I tried to rush past them, but one kneecapped me. I fell to the floor, and as I was getting up another did the same. It took me a while to get up and get the hell out of their way, because they kept hitting me and hitting me and I couldn't move fast enough. That was the first time that had ever happened…and it shouldn't have. They were unpredictable, but they weren't that fast. I should have been able to dodge them…something was wrong.

And then I knew.

I made it to the door, grabbed the candle that waited for me on the stairs, and ran down the steps, because I'd finally realized that something new was pursuing me and I couldn't stop. Not if I wanted to live.

The Southfield was quiet...just dusty bottles and wooden floors, not even any slugs on the walls. I dropped the billiard ball on the table and waited for whatever was supposed to happen to happen. Nothing happened, though, and then I remembered that there was more to do. I'd forgotten that, too.

The thing was behind me still, breathing down my neck and dripping its slime down my back. I felt it as surely as if it were really there, drooling on me like the alien in that movie the name of which I couldn't remember. That was the problem, you see...I couldn't remember, and I couldn't move quickly enough. I was too slow to avoid those wheelchairs now. I was too slow to do anything.

The simple fact was that I was goddamn _tired._ And it was starting to catch up to me. The fatigue, the running around, the killing, the terror…all of it. It was as real a force as if it were flesh and blood. I hadn't put any food into my stomach in a while, nothing but those brown drinks, and every time I'd fallen asleep I'd had those nightmares. So, I hadn't slept much over the last several days, either. The headache that pounded constantly against my temples had been there for so long that most of the time I didn't even notice it any more. Then, with everything that had happened today...I didn't have a lot left.

I'd been running on fumes for hours, and those fumes weren't going to last forever. I was lucky that I'd lasted this long, actually, that I'd been able to ignore it up until this point. But now, that was over. I was on borrowed time, just like Eileen...I just hadn't realized it. Add that to the list of things that I couldn't do a damn thing about, I guess.

But there was nothing to do but keep going. If I stopped now, we were both as dead as Richard. I took a deep breath.

_One thing at a time. Let's get that door open._

It was locked again, and the old code didn't work. Fortunately, my unseen bartender friend had had more unsecured thoughts on security, and left them for me.

_The boss said we had to change our phone number  
'cause of all the complaints about the weird noises._

What weird noises? What had happened since I'd been here last?

_Now we have to change the store sign on the roof. What a pain.  
By the way, the number is the last 4 digits of the new phone number.  
Not too smart if you ask me..._

Same problem, man...leaving notes around. Same benefit to me, though, and all I'd have to do was go back to my place and check out the new sign. I could take a minute to do that.


	28. The buildings again 2

Joseph had decided to finish up his note from before, and it was another winner. This time, he went into detail about Walter's growing resentment towards people outside the cult, and the obsession with his mother and with the 21 Sacraments that grew just as quickly. I'd never have guessed, though, that Walter had gone to PRU, just like I had. So, he'd gotten away from the cult for a little while and made an attempt at a normal life. Wonder what his major had been. Actually…if he'd been planning this all along (and he probably had), what would have been the most useful field of study for him?

_Heh. If I were him…knowing what I was going to be spending my time doing, I'd probably have gone pre-med._

Otherwise, there was nothing new at my place. Same screaming babies, same blood in the kitchen sink, same shoes watching the kettle that would never boil. Unfortunately, the number on the billboard for the Southfield was also exactly the same as before...555 - 3750. So that wasn't going to help, since they hadn't changed the billboard yet. Well, those things took time, right? And who knew how much time had passed between the two notes from the bartender?

_...but I'll bet that the phone number has been forwarded, so they don't lose any business. That doesn't take long to arrange at all._

I plopped back down on the bed and picked up the phone. Naturally, I had a dial tone now. Naturally. And naturally, when I tried to dial Frank's number, all I got was very strange-sounding heavy breathing. And no, it clearly wasn't Frank. So, I figured that I only had one option. 555 - 3750 it was.

An unsettlingly smooth male voice (or maybe I was just being a little paranoid...you think?) told me that the new number was 555 - 4890. I wrote it down, dropped off things I didn't need, yelled at the screaming babies to shut the hell up and threw myself back into the Hole.

* * *

4890 did the trick. The door clicked and I flung it open. 

The stairwell was still there. But the steps downward that were damaged before were now covered by a layer of brick and concrete debris. Part of the wall above seemed to have fallen down for whatever reason, and was bridging the old gap. Even Eileen would be able to walk across with a few careful steps. It looked as though she and I would be able to get down the stairs, so now I knew where I had to go.

Now, to figure out how to get her down here. There would have to be a way around the ladders, to one of the doors just outside the bar by the stairs I'd just come down, or to one of the doors above the shower room. Well, the door of time was still an option, right?

I was lucky. Only got hit once by the wheelchairs on the way back.

* * *

"Eileen!" I called as I started up the ladder. "It's me. I think I know – " 

She was crouched on the floor of the elevator, shaking, as the red and black streaks throbbed across her back. She was clutching her nightstick in her hand. It had blood on it, and as I watched, frozen on the ladder, she started smacking herself with it.

I shot up the ladder, across the elevator, and back out the other side, where I grabbed the candle that was still out there and ran back to her. (Yeah, I forgot about the one I'd just found on the steps by the Southfield.) I lit it and shoved it into the chain-link of the floor of the elevator by her feet, and stepped back out of her aura of pain. As I watched, the candle burned down quickly, and as the red streaks faded, her nightstick slowed and soon stopped. The candle finally burned out, and she struggled to her feet. Her skin was clear again, but for the usual bruises and cuts and the _20 / 21_ that still marked her back. She stared around for a minute, dazed, then saw me and blinked at me. Then, she looked down at her arms and legs.

"It...worked," she said with a wide grin. "It worked. Henry, it worked!" She laughed in pure joy and threw herself into my arms. I rubbed her back again, and felt the cool, smooth skin only interrupted by the cuts that I didn't want to remind her of. Why dilute her happiness?

"I'm going to make sure I always have one of those on me," I said into her hair. "Always." It just might make the difference between life and death. For both of us. She was OK now, but I didn't know if she would be that way for long. Even if the effects of the candle lasted, and there was no guarantee that they would, we weren't done yet.

"Thank you."

Her smile was radiant through her tears of happiness. It twisted me around inside, to see her so blissfully ignorant of what I'd realized on the way to the Southfield, but it wasn't all bad. She didn't need to know. Not just yet. I reached over and pressed the button for the top floor, and we rode up together, still in each other's arms. She was so happy that I hoped she wouldn't notice if I drew a little energy from her joy, just a little...

* * *

The elevator stopped at the top of its run, and we went through the back door that led to the spiraling dead-end hallway. It wasn't going to be safe, of course, but we had to look everywhere, and I knew that if I was going to hide something important, like the key to a door or something, I'd put it somewhere obscure just like there. Of course, I realized after we'd hacked through three apes that it was also the perfect red herring. There was nothing there but a box of revolver bullets. 

We stepped out of the other set of doors to find ourselves looking down over the ledge at Richard, who was still writhing under the sword I'd planted in him. The stairs up to the pet store were unguarded but for two hellhounds, and as I crunched my axe through one Eileen beat the tar out of the other with her nightstick. That thing really could do some damage, it turned out.

The stairs that I'd run down so easily before seemed to stretch endlessly upwards now, and as we climbed them I walked slowly and pretended that I was lost in thought.

"What's going on, Henry?"

My head shot up. She was already ahead of me, standing up by the door, looking down with a mixture of impatience and concern on her face. How slowly _had_ I been going, anyway?

"Nothing. Just thinking."

"What about?"

"The usual." I reached the top. "Let's head in here. Should be OK."

The sports shop was just as dilapidated as before. I threw the volleyball into the basket of balls, and it settled in to become just one of many. Eileen stared around curiously as I dug the note out of my pocket.

"This looks like that sports shop down the street," she said. "I used to buy my sneakers here. But it hasn't looked like this in years."

"Yeah. I came here for some stuff a few years ago for a camping trip."

She looked at me oddly. "You go camping?"

"What?"

"Well…you don't really look like the camping type. You know."

"I'm not. I only went one time, for a couple of days. It was for work."

"Oh."

"But yeah, this is Albert's."

Time to change the subject.

"Two out of four," I said, pointing at the note. "There are four memories in here...a birthday, a cat, a basket of balls, and a game of pool."

"Four memories…and four objects, right?"

"I think so. I found a cue ball, and dropped it off on the table at the Southfield. So, that was the game of pool. We just took care of the basket of balls. What's left is a cat and a birthday. There's a pet store downstairs, and I know where to find the birthday party."

She walked over to the counter and picked up a brightly colored plastic package. She held it out to me, and I read the label.

_Cake Candles_

She smiled. "And now, we can even bring a present."

"That reminds me…could you give me my lighter back? Just in case."

Her smile faded. "Yeah. Of course."

* * *

Through the storage room. Down the short hall. Up the red stairwell, dodging the guy in the hat and Jasper the Crispy Ghost again. Hadn't we left him behind in the forest? Oh yeah...he never got pinned. Guess they did get around. 

God, my legs were getting tired. But at the top of those stairs was the birthday party I was looking forward to. I'm not a party person, either, in case you hadn't guessed, but this one...well, this one was going to be special. Granted, the cake was probably dry as hell by now and the cobwebs were dusty, and the guest of honor wasn't in any mood to enjoy the champagne...

"Henry?" Eileen was tapping my shoulder as the ghosts floated up the stairs. "Henry, let's go."

"Sorry."

The poor bastard in the sweater was still pinned under the sword just as I'd left him, and the party supplies were still spread across the table, just like before. I pulled the candles out of their bag and counted them. Ten candles...and ten places to put them. That was easy, and the glow of the candles did brighten the place up a little. The flickering flames were mesmerizing, too, in the grayness of the room. They were warmth and life in the middle of all of this death, like primitive little fiery sprites dancing madly, defiantly…

I felt Eileen's hand on my arm. She had a wet paper towel in her hand, and as I stood there she started mopping my face again. This time, I could feel the cold dampness less well...probably because my skin wasn't quite as hot and inflamed as it had been in the subway. It did feel good, though, and I closed my eyes and let out my breath.

Her hand stopped moving for a split second. At first, I thought that I must have had really bad breath or something by then, but then she grabbed my arm tightly. I opened my eyes to see what was going on. The room was moving around me. That was strange...I didn't feel any motion...then Eileen pushed me backward and I felt something poke into the backs of my legs and I sat down hard in one of the chairs. Then, the room wasn't moving any more. That was good, right?

I gripped the seat of the chair on either side and focused on the light above the table and the pretty colorful streamers hanging down over me. I guess I was too tired to realize that I should be worried about _why_ the room had been moving a moment before.

But Eileen wasn't.

"Henry, what's wrong?"

"Wrong?" I asked. _That's right...I guess I should be worried about that moving room thing_. But Eileen wasn't supposed to worry. About anything, least of all me. "Nothing's wrong."

She pulled out another chair and sat down facing me. "Henry, you were out on your feet there, just now. You nearly fell. Something's going on. You're not feeling well."

"No, Eileen, I'm feeling fine."

"No, you're _not_. You're slurring your words too."

I concentrated. "Really. I'm feeling just fine." _Well, maybe I'm slurring a little…_

"You look…you look more tired than I've ever seen anybody. You're exhausted. Can't hide that from me, you know," she said with a wry smile.

I blinked, and blinked again so that I could focus on her face. She frowned. "That's it. You're not going anywhere until you've had a rest. I won't let you."

I raised an eyebrow at her. "You won't let me? Haven't we had this dis...dis..." – _dammit, I can't even __**talk**__ now – _"haven't we been over this before?"

"Yeah, but this is different. I'm a load on you. No, don't say anything – I know that I am. I'm not doing anything except slowing you down. But you…you're our way out of here. If you're out of commission, I'm dead too. We've had _that_ discussion before."

…_oh yeah. I remember._

"And anyway, I wouldn't mind taking a load off for a little," she added. She bent to unbuckle a shoe.

I managed to put my hand out to stop her.

"What?"

"No." I shook my head, which was a mistake, because I was dizzy now. She sat down in a chair in front of me, and I concentrated on getting the words out of my mouth.

"If something comes through that door, there, or the other one...we're going to need to get going. Fast. We won't have time for you to put your shoes back on. Here," I said, scooting backward and trying not to tip the chair. "Put your feet up."

I bent forward (carefully) and lifted one foot, than the other, onto my knees. Then, I took the wet paper towel that she'd left on the table and started wiping the dirt and slug guts off of her feet. It gave me something to focus on, which helped.

"Walter can wait," I said.

"You're right. We're Sacraments, after all. He'll have to."

"Exactly."

So, we ended up sitting there for I'd guess about five minutes with her feet on my lap. I closed my eyes and worked by touch, and after I'd cleaned them as best I could, I put the dirty towel on the table and started rubbing her feet. They were hot and swollen, and I told myself that if I ever dated anybody again, I'd never, ever ask her to wear heels. The fragile little purple shoes she'd planned to wear to her party were now stained and ragged, the satin shredding and snagged, and the thin soles were nearly worn through from walking. The straps around her ankles had left little red marks, and I thought that I could see blisters developing on the sides of her feet where the edge of the shoe met the sole. The heel of the shoe on her bad leg was worn very unevenly, too, and that couldn't have been good for her injured ankle. She needed this rest more than I did. Yeah. She did.

I cracked one eye open and sneaked a glimpse at her. She was slumped in her chair, eye closed and hands crossed on her stomach, with a smile of relaxation on her face. The little red streaks were back, though...so the candle's effects weren't going to last. Well, we'd just have to keep fixing her up as needed.

I had a sudden vision of what we must have looked like at that moment. Two dirty, tired, beat-up people, slouched wearily in chairs around a table at the most depressing birthday party imaginable, trying to catch just enough rest to get going for a little while longer and doing their best to ignore the stench of rotting flesh and the very-undead guy pinned to the floor a few feet away.

_Two people in need of cheering up…_

"We're a sorry pair, aren't we?" I asked with a grin.

She smiled tiredly and hung her head over the back of the chair. "Pathetic," she said to the ceiling.

"Miserable."

"Feeble."

"Pitiful."

"Wretched."

"And we're both walking thesauruses."

She laughed. "That's what a college education will do for you."

"What? Allow us to make stupid jokes in the pits of hell?"

"Among other things."

"Glad we got _something_ out of it that we can use down here."

"Yeah, really." She lifted her head and opened her eyes. "What do you do, anyway?"

"Huh?"

"For a living. What do you do?"

"Oh. I'm a photographer."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"Sounds cool. So, do you get to travel the world in search of the perfect image?"

"I wish. I work for a company that does ads and brochures. I do buildings, hills, construction sites…whatever the boss wants a picture of. Last week, I spent a day taking pictures of the trees in the park by the library, and the next day I took some shots of the new construction at the mall. And if I'm lucky, he lets me do my own layouts. Trust me, it's far less glamorous than it sounds."

That earned a belly laugh from her. "I'll trust you on that. You'll have to show me some of your pictures sometime."

"I have to, huh?"

"Yeah. Sounds more interesting than my job."

"Which is?"

"Right now, I'm a receptionist. Last of a dying breed, actually. Everybody around here is going to voicemail and fancy phone systems now. But I'm doing it to save up for grad school, so it's only for a couple of more years. I hope."

"Still…I, uh, guess you get to meet people." _Something __**you'd**__ happily avoid for the rest of your life. Lame again, Henry…_

"True. Most of 'em are OK. I kind of like it, actually."

"So…what do you want to be when you grow up? An archaeologist, right?"

"Yeah."

"Traveling the world, digging for a living?"

She laughed, again. It was way too easy to make her laugh. "Good honest work. Not like _some_ people."

I raised my eyebrow at her. "And what do you mean by _that?_ Sounds like you're the one who wants to go to grad school and avoid the real world for as long as possible."

"Got me there. Don't worry. I know shutterbugging is probably harder than it sounds."

"Actually, yeah, it is. Pay's lousy, too."

"Same here. Enough to make ends meet."

"And not much else."

She took one of the dusty wine glasses from the table. "Well, here's to it."

I did the same. "What?"

"Making ends meet. And wasting a good education in the process."

"Cheers."

The grime in the glasses looked older than I was.

"Imagine something really good in these glasses," she said.

"Some wine that costs more per bottle than both of us make in a month."

"Sure."

"Actually, right now I could go for a cheap sangria."

"Sounds good to me."

We clinked, and put them back on the table.

"Feeling better?" she asked.

"Yeah."

I patted her feet, and she wiggled her toes.

"That feels _so_ much better. Thanks."

"Ready?"

"Yeah. Before we go…wanna see my cat?"

Even I wasn't too tired to double-take at that. She was grinning from ear to ear, holding out an enormous stuffed cat with droopy ears and a pink ribbon tied around its neck.

"Gotcha. Cute, huh?"

"Where did you find that?"

"Over by the door, right before you started swaying. Maybe it'll help out in the pet store."

As I stood up again, the room swam again, but just a little. I was feeling somewhat better, but obviously not up to par. Well, it would have to be good enough for now.


	29. The buildings again 3

Even though we had the last piece of the puzzle, we'd have to haul butt all the way back upstairs to make sure that we weren't missing anything that we might need for later. So, we did. All the way back up. There were dogs, and more dogs, and a few useful things. And lots of stairs. Lots of 'em. I hit the Hole at the end of the long corridor where I'd first woken up to drop off some stuff, and noted the addition of a very staticky TV broadcast to the list of supernatural things wrong with my place. Fiddling with the knobs did nothing but make my headache worse, and the remote was still dead, of course, so I left it as it was.

Eileen and I headed back down the stairs to the sports shop.

"The last place we're going is the pet store," I said. "The door of time is just down the stairs from there, and then we'll see what happens."

In the pet store, there was a handy open cage on the counter, along with the usual squeals and barks that had been there before. I grabbed some good stuff off of the shelves, and put the stuffed cat into the cage.

_Tick tock tick tock tick tock_

Time to go. Just as well, too, as one of our undead friends was pushing his way through the wall by the back door now. I gave him a couple of whacks to get him out of the way, and we headed out the door.

The door led to another blood-red stairwell. There was a newspaper lying on the ground at the top of the stairs. It was hard to read, but it seemed to be about the murder of the owner of the pet store...and his entire stock of animals. They'd all been gunned down, even the smallest animals, and worse. I don't know which seemed more horrible to me, his killing or the slaughtering of all of those dogs and cats and whatever else had lived in those cages. When I got to the part about the owner's missing heart and the five numbers carved into his flesh, I knew that he must have been one of the first ten. Made sense, didn't it? After all, if you want lots of blood in a convenient carrying case, why not take the heart?

Heh. Told you this would get nasty.

Then, we heard the sound of machine gun fire and screaming animals. It was definitely time to get moving. Fortunately, the stairwell was uninhabited, and soon we found ourselves in the upside-down room. This time, though, I felt as if I was right-side up, which was a relief. Eileen took out the bird-bats flying around the room, with my help (she was getting pretty good with the nightstick), I grabbed some bullets that were lying on a shelf, and we crossed the room to the clock that was ticking upside down on the door, its weight swinging back and forth upright like a metronome. It was heavy, but swung open with a little effort.

Beyond _that_ door was a long square stairwell, with lots of undead occupants to keep us moving. Joy. Eileen hobbled and I ran, and I only got swatted at twice. The walls were lined with doors, dozens of them, but none of them opened, of course. Me being me, I tried every one, because the only thing worse than trying every door and finding out that none of them open is _not_ trying them, hitting a dead end and then having to go all the way back up and do it all over again. The one at the bottom of the steps did open, though, and we managed to slam it closed on Jasper's charred hand. Wonder if he felt that.

Now, we were in a large concrete area, partly enclosed by chain-link. Beyond the chain-link on one side was a narrow spiral staircase that stretched far up the wall, and was completely inaccessible. To this day I have no idea why it was there, or where it led to. But of more immediate concern were the hellhound and the group of apes that were wandering in our direction. The apes were armed with golf clubs, too, just to keep things interesting. Told you. Never a dull moment.

"Time to complete the collection," I muttered. "Back me up."

"You know it."

I have to say that I managed to keep Eileen from getting hit at all. Of course, this meant that over the next several minutes I got a good beating myself. I can now tell you from experience that golf clubs hurt like a sonuvabitch. That's something else you'll want to take my word for. It took a while, but we got the job done, as always. Net gain: four dead apes and one dead dog, and more golf clubs...and a very broken leg. That was from the last one, on its way down, swiping at me with a big wooden club and causing my shin to make a cracking sound that I'd never heard before. Somehow, as I felt things bend and break, I knew not to look or I'd feel a lot worse. So I gritted my teeth and reached into my pocket and bolted the rest of the bottle, because that that had been the last ape and nothing else was coming at me.

Eileen blanched as she hobbled back over, and put her cast-hand over her mouth. Must have been pretty bad, huh? But she had another bottle in her hand, and that was a very welcome sight. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw vaguely that my foot wasn't where it should have been, not by a long shot. Still, I managed not to look, even when I felt a very slight breeze across my flesh through the pain and realized just what had happened to me.

"Eileen...I need you to...straighten me out. Can you..."

"Hold still. Ready?"

She put her leg on my knee to hold it in place, and took hold of my boot and then I was blind for a few seconds as she moved things back into line. I think I might have made some noise, too, but I don't know for sure. Then, my leg was straight again, and it didn't hurt as much, and both of us sat there and waited for the stuff to do its work.

"This isn't good," she said under her breath. My eyes were closed, so I couldn't see her face, which was probably a good thing just then.

"None of it is good," I replied through clenched teeth. I was trying to think of happy things...sitting by the lake at my parents' friends' house watching the sun go down over the water...lobbing water balloons with Dad on those weekend afternoons...spending a day in the park by the apartments, just me and my old camera...eating mounds and mounds of linguini at Fuseli's with Eileen..._huh, how did that slip in?_

"No, I mean you. You're getting sloppy."

_What?_

My first reaction was anger. When I'm tired, I get cranky, and my fuse was very, very short just then. I couldn't believe my ears. _She's_ the one limping around with just a nightstick, _she's_ the one who goes off on a possessed tirade if a monster so much as breathes on her, _she's_ the one who I've got to protect as if she was made of toothpicks and glue, and _I'm_ the one who gets called sloppy? I was working my goddamn _ass _off to keep both of us from ending up dead, hauling us both up and down stairs and through more undead monsters than anyone could have ever imagined in their worst nightmares...

Just as I opened my mouth to rant, she saw the look on my face again and put her hand on my arm. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean that. Well, not like that anyway. I'm just worried about you. You seem so tired."

I closed my mouth again. Guess I wasn't as good at hiding that as I'd thought I was.

"I've been keeping an eye on you. From what you tell me, you've been going through hell all day, Henry, since long before you got me out of the hospital, and I...well, every time you get hurt, it gets worse. A broken cheekbone is one thing...but a broken leg..."

The rant I'd worked myself up for wasn't happening any more, but I was still a little irritated. "Well, things have gotten a _little_ tougher recently," I grumbled.

She peered at me.

"You know I don't mean anything by it, right? I mean, about you."

I fixed her with my "Oh really?" look, and damned if she didn't meet it with a look that said nothing more than "Yeah". But neither of us was really serious, of course. I just had to check, and she understood that.

Still, I felt bad now. Thank God nothing was stopping me any more from saying foolhardy things like "When we get out of here, I'm taking you to dinner."

She stared at me in astonishment. I didn't think I'd gone too far...

"Like hell you are."

Zero for two. I _was_ losing my edge.

"I'm taking _you_ to dinner."

I raised my eyebrow at her, but she just smiled as best she could. She was tired, too. And yeah, now that I thought about it, it _would_ be nice to be taken to dinner. Never was hung up about that sort of stuff, who takes who, you know. I knew just the place, actually.

"Fuseli's. Their linguini is..."

"To die for. I know. And they have the best garlic bread in town. And plenty of cheap sangria. And the good stuff, too, if we want it. I think we've earned it."

"Actually…"

"What?"

"I like the cheap stuff better."

"Oh, thank God. So do I, but I didn't want to seem like a cheapskate or anything."

I felt a stupid grin spread across my face. "Heh. Let's go."

"Out the door, or to Fuseli's?"

"Both. I like garlic bread."

She laughed. "Please tell me that we're going to come across it any minute now."

"Probably not. Sorry. But there's a Chinese restaurant on the way."

"Nah. MSG gives me headaches. We'd just be hungry again in an hour anyway."

Now, it was my turn to laugh. "They're probably not open this late, either."

"You're good to go?"

"I'll tell you if I'm not. Not that I need to," I said, as I pulled myself up and put a little weight on the leg, then more. It felt a little sore, but otherwise fine. I held my hand out to help her up. "You seem to be able to spot it from across the room."

She shrugged. "Kind of hard to miss a broken leg."

* * *

Door and stairs, through the locked door, and at the end we were in a long corridor with a ladder leading down and a misspelled sign advertising "Chinise BBQ" and my friend with the trowel from a while back. Yeah, we were back in the same alley I'd seen the two Walters in a little before, the one that led to the Southfield and to our way out of here. But this time, we had company. I squeezed Eileen's hand.

"We're almost there. Let's get going."

Down the alley with the ghost on our tail. Past the vending machine, and through the door. Down the stairs, and stop near the bottom to watch the wheelchairs. Watch for an opening, and run like hell, and beat them down until Eileen can catch up. Down the stairs, kill an ape, kill a bird-bat. Into the Southfield, and watch in astonishment as Eileen beats down another ape and puts her foot through its skull.

"This place has really gone downhill," she said, as she stood over the cooling body with her hand on her hip. "The clientele most of all."

"Yeah." I picked up a bottle from the counter. "Vodka. Good stuff, too. Not sure I trust it down here, though."

_Too bad. We could both use a drink._

* * *

The stairs weren't so terrible, it turned out. Yeah, they went on for forever and a day, just as they had before, but there were only bird-bats here, no ghosts, and we were both moving slowly enough that they were easily taken out. We were going downward, too, not up, which helped a lot. Round and round we went. Finally, at the bottom we found some old barrels and a door with a first-aid kit in front.

"This doesn't bode well," Eileen said, as I pocketed the kit. I agreed, so I pulled the near-empty bottle of brown stuff out and finished it off to fix myself up for whatever lay ahead.

The door opened into a room that made me long for my camera again. It was a huge rectangular room, several stories tall, hung on all sides with immense amounts of what looked like parachute silk or something like it. The silk was draped in gathers from vertical cords, like curtains, and gleamed golden in the light of the huge chandelier that hung from the middle of the ceiling far above. We were dwarfed by the gigantic scale of _everything_.

Across the room was a single door with the familiar red circles on it. In the middle was a massive hole, taking up most of the floor and creating a deep, hazardous ledge a few feet wide that was going to be tough to navigate. I couldn't see the bottom of the hole. Weird music played from somewhere up above. I'd never seen anything remotely like it in my life, and it was a stunning change from the gray that we'd been living in for the last few hours. As I was admiring the room, I looked up to see if I could see the music's source.

_Crap._

Twelve large metal frames, four on each side and two on each end, hung from heavy cables against the walls. They slid up and down the wall in random patterns, and in each one was the biggest goddamn wall man I'd ever seen. They were just like the ones I'd seen in the subway and the prison, but many times larger, golden, and easily capable of knocking me or Eileen off of our feet and into the hole to oblivion. Their flesh was tied to their frames in places, as if they'd been lashed into the frames for the express purpose of sliding up and down those walls and taking out whoever would challenge them. And we were going to have to get past them somehow to the door.

I put my arm in front of Eileen to hold her back. "Wait," I said. We watched them slide up and down the walls for about half a minute. They did seem to come down in patterns, one after the other in order, and it looked as though if we were careful, we could do a timed run (well, hobble) past them and make it to the other side.

"Ready?"

"Ready." And we went for it. Two smacks and a swipe later, we were at the door...

…which refused to open. I pulled and pushed and swore and even hacked at it with the axe for a while, and of course it didn't do a damn bit of good. We'd have to do something to unlock it, and since we hadn't found a key anywhere it seemed painfully clear what that something was. So, we assumed battle positions (me with my axe held over my shoulder, Eileen with her nightstick two steps out of backswing range), and we went to work on the nearest one.

We worked. And worked. And worked. It would slide up and come back down, and swipe at us, and it took everything we had to avoid getting hit. If it didn't take a swing at us, its neighbors would, so we had to stand right in front of it and rely on timing to keep its swats from connecting with us.

Some minutes later (that seemed like hours), we were sweaty and tired and the damn thing _still hadn't died_. It and its friends were watching us, waving and swinging their red palms as if we didn't even exist.

Time for a breather against the door.

"We're missing something here," Eileen said. "There's something that we're not doing."

I was still catching my breath. "What the hell else...can we do? We've been...hacking at the damn thing...forever…but it won't die."

"That's exactly it. Why won't it die? We have to think."

I let her do the thinking while I did the breathing. Thank God it took her a little while to come up with the answer.

"The Ultimate Truth," she said.

"The Ultimate Truth." _Uh…OK…_

"We're supposed to go down and find the Ultimate Truth. Remember?"

"Yeah..." I stared at the twelve figures sliding up and down the wall. "And you think that we've found it?"

"Almost. Why point out that there's an Ultimate Truth unless there's more than one? You see what I'm saying?"

"Yeah. So, we're looking for _one_ Truth. Twelve wall men, and one Ultimate Truth, right?"

"Right."

"And we don't have any idea which..."

"Nope."

"No, didn't think so."

"Well, I think we can eliminate the one we just spent five minutes wailing on."

"That leaves eleven."

"Gotta start somewhere."

"Next?"

"Next. Let's try the one on the other side."

No luck there, but a funny thing happened when we rounded the corner and started in on the third one. I didn't see it at first, but Eileen grabbed my arm between swings.

"Henry! Look!"

I took a quick glance around. All of the others had stopped their flailing, and were hanging there limply, just like the one in front of me. I wound up another swing and let fly, and as we watched, all of them jumped. Not just the one in front of me..._all_ of them. That hadn't happened before. Did that mean...

She was hopping up and down excitedly. "This must be the one! Keep going!"

So I did. After a couple of smacks that sent me flying but didn't do anything more then give me some good bruises, it slid up the wall and stayed up for a bit, then came back down. By that time, I'd caught my breath, and figured out how to time things so that it didn't have a chance to get anywhere near connecting its swing.

After a while, it hung there limply again, and Eileen stepped forward and joined in with her nightstick. It's really true what they say, you know, about splitting a job...it seems like a lot less than half the work. And before we knew it, all of them were sliding up the wall in unison and we heard the most wonderful sound we'd heard in hours.

_Click_.

My hand went to the doorknob, but then I heard a groan. Had she gotten hurt? I swung around, but she was just standing there. She looked OK. So, was it me? No, I was sore, but nothing was wrong otherwise…

"Son of a…" she muttered. "Will you look at that."

She was staring just below the red emblem on the door, at a small sign posted right in the middle.

_To reach the deepest part, you must defeat the One Truth.  
Do so and this door will open._

I couldn't believe my eyes. We gaped at the little sign for several seconds.

"Bet you ten bucks that it was there when we came in," Eileen said.

"Probably."

Silence.

"Well, I guess we should feel good about figuring it out on our own."

"That was all you. I should have seen it."

"I should have, too. You were busy trying to keep us alive. This one's on both of us."

"Yeah."

Silence.

"Damn," she said. "We _are_ tired."

* * *

The spiral was dark and almost devoid of fog, and the sharpness of its edges in the blackness was a shock to my tired eyes. It took me several seconds to focus in on the layers of spiral, heading downward and downward, and the wall far below that would hold the inevitable Hole, and then...

I blinked. And blinked again. And then I realized that I wasn't seeing things.

There was ground down there. Real, solid ground. I could see the gray rocks and the debris lying there, far below...and the end of the stairs.

Ground. This was it.

The end of the line.


	30. At the bottom of the stairs

I didn't want to get my hopes up, but I couldn't help myself. This might or might not really be the end…but at least, it was _something_. As for what lay beyond…well, we'd deal with it when we got to it.

I reached for Eileen's hand and pointed downward. "See that?"

She squinted into the darkness. "It's…it's dirt. Ground! Henry! Can you believe it? We're almost there!" Another hug, which was always a welcome thing. "Never thought I'd be so happy to see dirt."

"Yeah. Neither did I."

Outside of the stairs, I could see a distant horizon illuminated by the last glow of evening…or was it the first glow of morning? I couldn't tell, of course. Its strange beauty didn't frighten me or unnerve me or even cause me to stop and stare, though…it was just there. For once it seemed as if the stairs had some measure of context, one way or another. Some grounding in _something_, even if it wasn't reality. We were making our way down through the worlds of memory and dreams, through Walter's twisted nightmares, and now we'd come to the bottom of the path. I could imagine how we might appear from a distance…two bright figures moving slowly along the dimly lit spiral, an oasis of light in the endless dark land, and I felt as if we were in the middle of a prog-rock album cover. That was kind of cool, actually.

The usual Hole was there, a little over one turn from the bottom of the steps, and I climbed in as Eileen leaned back against the railing, looking around.

"Enjoy the view," I said just before I was sucked away.

* * *

I woke again to the red headache. Exorcism time again, it seemed. This time around, my phone was talking to me in an unfamiliar voice. 

"I'm always _watching_ you..."

I didn't recognize the voice at all. I'd never heard it before. I backed away and fumbled in my pockets for a candle and the lighter. My hands were shaking again, which didn't help.

"I'm _always_ watching you…"

I finally managed to get the damn candle lit, and stood it on the nightstand. It burned down very quickly, and as I listened the voice grew fainter and finally died away. I backed up another step and…

_God damn it! Not again!_

I spun around. I was standing in front of my chest of drawers, the one that held the globe that Grandma gave me when I was little so that she could show me where she'd grown up and the places she'd been. Or so Mom told me. Anyway, the picture of the church in Silent Hill usually hung above it. At least, it _had_ been a picture of the church…now, the frame held a hazy image of a head in shadows, with long hair and a grin on its face. At first, I thought it looked a lot like the face on the Shroud of Turin, but then I recognized the shape of the nose and the eyes. I knew them all too well…but the hair was way too long to be Walter.

Still, whoever it was in the picture, another candle was called for. I pulled out the backup I'd found on the stairs and lit it and stuck it to the chest of drawers, and after a couple of minutes it was finally safe to leave my bedroom. But I was down two candles now, and I didn't have a lot to spare at this point. Hopefully, nothing else was awaiting me out front.

OK. Static on the TV. Check. Running blood in the sink. Check. Slippers still waiting for the empty teakettle to boil. Check. Goddamn screaming babies over the chest. Check. And…hey, Joseph was dropping me another line. Good. I'd been waiting to hear from him for a while.

I reached for the red paper, but my eyes saw the blood a split second too late, and the red headache crashed into my temples. I staggered back in pain and annoyance.

_Oh, this is just wonderful. Now they're screwing with my door. _

Blood was dripping down slowly from the peephole, and as I watched it ran down over Walter's writing and spread its thin red fingers over the dingy white paint. Time for another goddamn candle. As much as I needed to hoard them for Eileen, I knew that I didn't have a choice…I could ignore the problems in the front room and in the kitchen, but I had to be able to pick up Joseph's letters at the door.

Finding things in my chest took longer when I had to get into it from the side by the hallway. As I rummaged around, my fingers caught on something long and stringy, and I remembered about the medallions. The one I'd put on in the subway had broken a while later, just burst into pieces, and I hadn't remembered to replace it. The cord was still hanging around my neck, actually. I pulled a new one out and swapped it for the empty leather strap, and tucked it into my shirt. Might as well…and maybe it would let me get closer to the door to drop off a candle.

I grabbed two candles, one for my pocket and one for the front door, threw in stuff I didn't need just then, and strode back to the door. Blood was welling up all around the peephole now, but with the medallion on I was able to get right up next to it. What the hell, I thought, might as well take a peek through, see what was on the other side...

God, I wish I hadn't. What I saw…oh God. The memory still scares the hell out of me to this day. In case it isn't obvious. Oh God. It was me. Me. _Me_ on the other side of that peephole. I could see myself out there as clearly as I'd seen Frank and Richard and Eileen before. I was standing there, twitching and mumbling something that I couldn't make out. That me was dressed just like I was, in my favorite shirt with a T-shirt underneath, and probably in the same jeans and boots, although I couldn't tell from the peephole. My hair was still long and ragged, too. But my skin was cut all over and green in places, and my neck was bent backwards and sideways in an unnatural way. I couldn't see the eyes very well, but they seemed dark, maybe even absent.

Come on, Henry, say it…

I'd clearly been dead for days, and was starting to decompose. Blood and pus and whatever else a body produces in that state had darkened the neck of my shirt, and were running downward over my chest and shoulders and soaking into the fabric. The flesh on the face was starting to loosen, just like you see on TV. But I wasn't as dry-looking and gray as the ghosts I'd seen…no, this corpse was still quite moist, thanks.

The cuts were curved and straight, and with a little informed guesswork I could make out a _**21 / 21**_ there. Of course. This was me, after Walter did whatever he was going to do to me. Given the way my head was flopping around, it looked as though he planned on breaking my neck. That was something he hadn't done to anyone before, as far as I knew. He was planning on breaking my neck and carving me up and leaving me propped up against a wall somewhere, judging from the downward flow of the fluids. Or, perhaps, he was going to hang me from the spiral, just another dead body in his collection, and the bird-bats would rip my eyes from my head and have them for lunch. Who knows what he'd planned for me. But this reminded me that if I wasn't careful, if I didn't get past my tiredness and fear and all of that, I was going to find out just what it was like to be that Henry…forever. I couldn't stop looking at him.

_If I listen closely, I can probably figure out what he's saying…but I'm not sure that I want to know._

I don't know how long I stood there. Probably no more than fifteen seconds, but it seemed like longer. Then, I lit the candle in my hand, put it under the peephole, picked up the red note, and leaned back against the door of the laundry room to read it. To my relief, the blood on the door disappeared after a few seconds, and I knew that he – that _I_ – was gone. Time to think about something else. Anything else.

Joseph had left me a list.

_No. 1…Ten heart…  
No. 2…Ten…_

It was bloodier than usual, and I couldn't read a lot of the top of the page. But I didn't have to. This was _the_ list. It began with the first group of ten victims.

_No. 7…Ten hearts Billy Locane  
No. 8…Ten hearts Miriam Locane_

That's right. The Locane kids. Those were the kids that he'd killed. I remembered the papers and the magazines writing about them…he'd been caught shortly after their murders.

_No. 10…Ten…  
No. 11…Assumption Walter Sullivan_

Being proven absolutely correct in this situation was good for the intellect, but cold comfort for the soul.

_No. 12…Void…  
No. 13…Darkness…  
No. 14…Gloom…  
No. 15…Despair Joseph Schreiber_

So Joseph had made it all the way to number 15. Good for him. He'd lasted as long as he could have…and he'd ended up writing about his own death. But the list didn't stop there. I knew who was next before I read the name, of course.

_No. 16…Temptation Cynthia Velasquez  
No. 17…Source Jasper Gein  
No. 18…Watchfulness Andrew DeSalvo_

The names Gein and DeSalvo were familiar for some reason, but I didn't worry about it just then. Still can't place them. I'll have to do some searching online when I get the chance.

_No. 19…Chaos Richard Braintree_

And then, the two that I guess I'd still somehow hoped wouldn't be there. Why, I don't know. I must have, because I didn't expect the sinking feeling that came when I read the names.

_No. 20…Mother Eileen Galvin  
No. 21…Wisdom Henry Townshend_

_August 7_

And that was that.

* * *

All along the spiral staircase, there had been weird things off to the sides. Mostly, they were dead bodies. Some hung in the middle, twisting in the breeze, and some were in small tiled rooms with chain-link in front, posed like life-size dioramas. Once, I'd seen rotting legs hanging out of holes in a wall, as if shoved in there for storage, and another time there had been a sheep the size of a horse. Not sure what was supposed to be so terrifying about _that_, but it was a little unnerving. I guess I wasn't completely numb by then, though, because what I saw as we passed the last room confused me profoundly. 

"Henry…"

"Yeah. I see it."

Eileen peered closely.

"That _is_ a dancing baby, right?"

I nodded. It was a gray, naked, faceless, genderless baby, doing a little jerky dance that looked more like a rhythmic seizure. Its arms and legs flailed around in hiccupy spasms. I leaned back against the railing and watched it for a minute, with Eileen beside me.

Silence.

"Uh…what's it doing?" Eileen asked flatly.

_Waiter, what's this fly doing in my soup?_

"The Batusi, maybe?"

"Looks more like the Cabbage Patch."

"Well, whatever it is, it isn't the Macarena."

"Thank God. That is _so_ played out."

I shrugged. "I wouldn't know."

"Well, it is. It's been dead for years."

"Huh. Somebody should have told my cousin that before his wedding three years ago."

Eileen stared at me for a moment with her eye wide. Then, she started laughing hysterically. She bent forward, howling and grabbing at my sleeve, and I slid my hands under her armpits and lifted her back up against the railing so that she wouldn't fall over. Tears were running down her face as she leaned into me and pounded her good fist against my chest. At first I thought it was another one of her fits, but then I saw that her back was still its usual bruised purple-and-pink color. My head wasn't hurting, either. Sheesh. Whatever I'd said, it couldn't have been _that_ funny.

"Going to let me in on the joke?"

"Oh God, Henry," she sputtered, sniffing and wiping her eye with her cast. I made a mental note that I had to learn to be one of those guys who always carries a handkerchief. "Oh God…I'm sorry, but I just had the funniest mental picture."

"Do I want to know?"

"You, in a tux..."

"Guess that would be a _no._"

"...at a wedding, doing the Macarena."

No, even I couldn't picture that one. But what was so damn funny about it? Hell, I'd worn a tuxedo before. I'd been a groomsman at my cousin's wedding. Hadn't Macarena'd, though. Thank God. Still, why was that so...well, yeah, it was kind of ridiculous, actually. Me, dancing in front of a whole room of people. Never say never, but…Hell would probably freeze over first. I could just imagine the look on Mom's face if she saw that…

…_oh man, never mind the look on __**Dad**__'s face…_

I felt the corners of my mouth lifting up, and I bit my lip...then before I knew it was coming, I snorked just a little bit. She didn't miss a thing, that Miss Galvin, and she started laughing again, but not as hard.

"Don't tell me that it actually happened," she gasped. "Oh Jesus, I would have paid _money_ to see that."

"Sorry, but no, it didn't," I said, with as much faux-dignity as I could muster. Truth be told, by the time that Alan and Jody were drunk enough to get out on the dance floor and Macarena along with everybody else, I was alone at the end of the head table, deep in conversation with one of the bridesmaids…what was her name? Janine? Something like that. She'd wandered over and plopped down into the empty chair beside me, and seemed absolutely fascinated by the money clip that Alan had given me with my initials on it. I don't know why…it was a nice clip, gold with black enamel, but nothing unusual. After that, she decided that it was time to see if she could guess my name from my initials. This took a while (longer than it should have...how did she end up arriving at "Hannibal" before "Henry", anyway?), but it was kind of fun to watch her try. In retrospect, I don't think it would be too egotistical to say that she seemed interested, actually…but then again, she'd had a few, and so had I, and I had zero desire to go out there and try to manage a dance that I'd never done before. Sitting there talking to her and that enormous puffy dress of hers seemed a better option. But it came to nothing as it always did the moment the words "free-lance photographer" left my mouth, of course.

Anyway, none of that was relevant just then. Eileen smiled. "Smart move. There's not a single person on the planet that doesn't look stupid dancing the Macarena."

We continued down the last few steps. Eileen was still chuckling to herself. When we got to the bottom, she touched my arm.

"You know," she said, "my friend's sister is getting married two months from now, and I've been invited. You should come with me."

You can probably imagine the look on _my_ face.

"Come on, Henry. It won't be that bad, I promise. All we have to do is show up and bring some little gift – I've bought it already, so no big deal there – and eat the food and have a good time. No big deal. And I'm not in the bridal party, so it's not like I'd be leaving you alone the whole time to fend for yourself." She'd figured out that I really didn't like being at parties where I didn't know anybody…but it's probably not too hard to guess that with me. Does anybody?

My initial reaction? Terror, of course. Ghosts, undead babies, apes with golf clubs, two-story-tall wall men, resurrected serial killers with chainsaws, nightmare worlds…par for the course by now. Whatever. But… a _wedding?_

"But…but…but I don't know how to dance," was the best I could come up with.

"Nothing to it. Here."

Before I knew what was happening, she was standing right in front of me, arranging my arm around her waist and putting her hand in mine and telling me to follow her feet. I had no choice but to do as she said, or I would have tripped over her and we both would have fallen. So, she led and I followed.

At first, it was all I could do to avoid stepping on her feet. Despite my normal lack of coordination, though, I gradually got the hang of it. It wasn't difficult once you learned the pattern. One, two, three, four…one, two, three, four…forward, forward, side, side…back, back, side side…and if Walter was watching us as we passed through his nightmares one after the other, he would have seen nothing more astonishing that day than the two of us, tired, bloody and beyond worn out, surrounded by rotting corpses and rusty metal steps and a dancing baby, circling around the pits of Hell doing what Eileen told me was the foxtrot.

"See, you're a natural," she said as we moved. "The waltz is the same, but without the second step. I'll show you that later." She smiled up at me, and I have to say that the idea of seeing her in a nice dress _not_ beat to hell was pretty appealing. "Got a good suit?"

"Uh…yeah, just the one. Black." Still wrapped in plastic from the dry-cleaner's, in the back of my closet, along with my dress shirt and tie and shoes and socks. The first and last time I'd worn it had been to Grandpa's funeral a few years back, which was why I had bought it in the first place, but she didn't need to know that. I wasn't sure if it still fit me.

"That's fine. It's an evening wedding, so you'll fit right in. When we get out of here, I'll let her know you're coming along." She grinned. "Won't they all be surprised to see you!"

"How come?"

"Well, I've never brought anybody with me to a wedding before. And now, I'll be walking in on the arm of the best-looking guy there."

I really didn't know what to say to that…no, not the second part, which I wasn't going to think about. It was the idea that she'd never had a date to a wedding before. Well, neither had I, but I'd only been to the one. Eileen could have had any guy she wanted. Hell, you've seen her. Any guy at all. Why me? It made no sense.

Her good hand came down and patted the spot where she'd pummeled me earlier. "Sorry about that. But that _was_ funny, admit it."

"Not so much funny as…"

"As what?"

I gathered up the tattered remnants of my dignity and lifted my head high.

"Inconceivable."

She laughed at that. At least I could still make her laugh.

"So? What do you say?"

"About what?"

She punched me lightly in the arm again.

"Stop that, will you?"

"The wedding, of course."

Big, big sigh. "Fine. I'll go. But…"

"But what?"

"Only on one condition."

"Name it."

"No Macarena."

"Wouldn't be caught dead doing it."

"OK then. You're on. There's a problem, though."

"What?"

"...I still can't dance."

"You're doing fine."

"Thanks. But I know there's more to it than just this."

"Well, like I said, the waltz is just like the foxtrot, but in three instead of four. Just combine the second and third steps. Ready? On one. One-two-three-one-two-three...see?"

She wasn't kidding. _This isn't so bad,_ I thought as we slowly circled around the grayness. Before I knew it, I wasn't stepping on her feet at all. It didn't feel strange any more. It was even kind of fun. After a while, I had it down, but neither of us really wanted to stop, so on we went. She put her head on my shoulder, and her arm went around me as it had in the hospital. That felt good.

_Not so bad at all._

"Your feet," I said quietly into her ear. "Don't they – "

"Shhh," she replied into my neck.

Telling you this now, I realize just how corny it seems. It was the sort of thing that never happens in books, but that really can happen to you, once or twice in a lifetime if you're lucky. Things just come together, and at those moments anything is possible, anything. Truth is stranger than fiction, as they say, and we'd had enough strangeness that day to be concerned no longer about such things.

And as we circled around, a song I hadn't heard in years came into my head, and guided the rhythm of my steps. I'm not going to tell you which one...that's asking too much of me. No, it wasn't "Lola". But as the song ended, our feet slowed, then stopped, and I held her tightly and gazed up at the cold gray light from an unseen source that filled the stairwell with eerie shadows and fused us together in our wilderness. We'd been dancing all day, dancing like puppets for Walter's pleasure, but for just a few minutes we could dance only for each other. This was all ours.

* * *

Eileen's fingers slipped into my collar and pulled out the medallion hanging around my neck. She played with it for a while as I held her close and we reconciled ourselves to the inevitable. 

"We should get going."

"Do we have to?"

"Yeah. If we're ever going to make it to your friend's wedding."

She tucked the medallion back in, and her cool fingers brushed over my collarbone.

"OK."


	31. Joseph's 302

Just like before, there was a partial wall at the bottom of the steps. This time the door had no red circles on it, only a peephole and a very familiar plate with a very familiar number.

_**302**_

As Eileen stared at it in disbelief, I picked up the small diary lying open on the ground at the foot of the door. It was Frank's writing again. Apparently, I wasn't the only one who'd been having strange dreams recently. He wrote about the man with the coat again, as he'd seen him ten years ago, going up the stairs to my apartment with "a heavy tool, an old-looking bowl and a bag that was dripping blood". There were signs that somebody had been in there, he said, but he didn't see anything out of the ordinary…and now, there were weird noises coming from my room. Still. He knew that there was something going on (which I knew already), but there wasn't anything he could do about it.

_Of course there wasn't. This looks as if it was written today. There was nothing he could do by today…it was too late. Years too late._

I handed the book to Eileen and slid a couple of fingers through the knob-hole (there was no knob) and pulled. For once, the goddamn door opened.

Inside, it was gray. Not just grayish, like the forest, but completely without color. Everything was gray…and it wasn't the way I remembered it. The furniture was scattered around the room almost randomly. There was a record player where my TV had been, and many more books on the bookshelf. My radio was gone, too, and the pictures on the walls were different. But the hole in the wall was still there, and the inscription next to it was the same. There were dozens of white candles, too, lit and unlit, all around the room, and a couple of unfamiliar books lay on the coffee table. It was as if somebody else was living here, somebody who was having the same problems with undead infestation that I'd had. That was what made me realize just what was going on...and whose room we were really in.

"Joseph," I said. "This is his room."

"Not yours?"

"No."

Eileen was still looking around. "This _is_ 302, right?"

"Yeah, but this isn't how I have things laid out. Some of the furniture is the same, but this isn't my stuff. My TV isn't here. You know I have a TV, right? You must have heard it sometimes." God only knows why I had this irrational need to prove to her that my TV was missing.

"No, not really," she said. "You're pretty quiet. He was too."

_Too quiet...both him and me, which is why we both ended up in this mess. Maybe. I don't know._

Then her eye saw the hole in the wall, and opened very, very wide.

_Oh __**crap.**_

"What…the _hell_...is _that?_"

_Um…_

"That's a hole in the wall."

"I can see _that._ Does it go all the way through?"

"Uh…yeah…"

She turned back to me. "Do you have _any idea_ how suspicious this looks?"

"Eileen, that part of the wall has had a cabinet in front of it since I moved in." I took both of her hands in mine. "I just found it today. Swear to God."

She searched my face, but didn't say anything.

"Joseph left a message next to it that should explain a lot. Before you ream me out for not telling you about it, just…just read what he had to say."

I pointed her to the message, and as she crouched to read the words carved into the wall I sat down on the couch and picked up a book that lay open on the table. It was a kids' storybook, but as I read through it I realized that this story definitely wasn't for kids.

It was the story of a baby, a baby who was cut off from his mother at birth and sent to live at an orphanage. When the baby tried to wake up his mother, he couldn't do it because "the one that he was trying to wake up was actually the Devil". But then a ray of light came down and illuminated the cord lying in his hand, and he went to sleep happy. It didn't take a genius to figure out who the baby really was, of course…or that this book was probably telling me something important.

"I'm sorry, Henry."

I looked up. Eileen was standing by the hole with a stricken look on her face.

"All this time…I had no idea…Joseph was trying to get me to help him…"

"It's not your fault."

"How can you be so sure?" She shook her head. "I – I should have heard _something_…"

"Believe me. I know."

She sat down next to me.

"Did you…did you try, too?"

"Yeah. Yelled and hammered until my fists were swollen and my throat was raw. For days. Nobody heard me."

"Not even through the hole."

I saw the look on her face as the obvious next question came to mind. "Don't worry. I didn't look through…much."

She shrugged. "Nothing to see anyway, not today. I went to the grocery store this morning and had a quiet afternoon at home, at least until..."

"I know."

"Yeah, I guess you would," she said with a wry smile.

"I'm sorry. I really am."

She squeezed my knee. "That's OK. You were doing what you had to do. I probably would have looked too, if I were you."

"Thanks."

"Don't mention it. Really. Please. Don't." She smiled at me.

"Anyway, there was _no way_ that you could have known what was going on. And even if you had known, there was probably nothing you could have done about it anyway."

"But there is now," she said. "Now we know, and I'm going to…well, I don't know what, but I'll figure out something." She slapped the nightstick against the side of the table.

I didn't want her thinking like that for long, so I gave her the storybook. "See what you make of this."

I reached for the other book that still lay on the table. Its blood-red cover was slightly stained and warped as if from water damage, but its title was still legible.

_Crimson Tome_

It dropped open at a well-worn page.

_She who is called the "Holy Mother" be not holy one whit.  
The "Descent of the Holy Mother" is naught but the Descent of the Devil.  
Those that be called the "21 Sacraments" be not sacramental one whit.  
The "21 Sacraments" be naught but the 21 Heresies.  
To give birth to a world of wickedness within the blessed realm of our Lord  
be blasphemy and the work of the Devil.  
If thou would stop the Descent of the Devil,  
you must bury part of the Conjurer's mother's flesh within the Conjurer's true body.  
Thou must also pierce the Conjurer's flesh with the 8 spears of  
"Void", "Darkness", "Gloom", "Despair", "Temptation", "Source", "Watchfulness" and "Chaos".  
Do so and the Conjurer's unholy flesh will become that which once it was,  
by the grace of our Lord._

Can't say that I disagreed with the first part. I was relieved to see that we weren't the only ones left who thought that this was all completely wrong. But it was the second half of the page that was the most interesting. What I had here, it seemed, was an instruction manual on how to get our butts out of this mess. I was going to need "part of the Conjurer's mother's flesh", and eight spears…oh, and the Conjurer's true body.

So, we weren't done, yet, not for a while. There were more things to find, one more puzzle…and if I understood the meaning of the last sentence correctly, this would be the final puzzle. For if Walter (who else could be the Conjurer?) was going to be turned back into that which once he was, that had to mean that he was going to be either vulnerable or dead. Dead was preferable, but I'd take what I could get. Once that happened, I'd have my chance. Perhaps my only one.

Eileen closed the storybook and laid it on the table. There were tears in her eyes.

"So we were right," she whispered. Her fingers ran over the cover of the old book. "Walter's only trying to bring his mother back. But what he's really doing is bringing back the Devil, according to this."

"Hell on earth," I replied.

"Do you think he knows?"

"Do you think he'd care?"

Something about this room had me on edge, it seemed, and I reminded myself that she was the last person I should be short with.

I handed her the Crimson Tome, and as she read I looked around the room. So this was what Joseph had seen in his last days. This was the place where he'd written all of those notes he was leaving me, the place where he had lived and died. I knew this apartment like the back of my hand, every scratch on the wall and creak in the floor…after all, I'd spent almost all of my time over the last two years here. But this…this was alien to me. It was like a tomb, which was what it had turned into for him, I guess. Everything was gray and dead. It was neither warm nor cold, and nothing had a scent. I couldn't even detect the familiar woolen-upholstery smell of the couch that I was sitting on. It was all dead…and absolutely silent. The only sounds were my breathing and Eileen's.

"Good," Eileen said. I turned to her. She set the book down on the table, next to the little storybook. "Now we know what we have to do." Her jaw was set.

"But not how." I shook my head.

"We'll figure it out," she said. "I know we will."

* * *

We couldn't get into the laundry room, but the bedroom door was unlocked. There was a large dent in the wall at the end of the hallway, like the one by Eileen's room. Joseph had been chipping away there, too, but this time he hadn't gotten as far through as he had in the front room. There was red writing on the walls on either side of the dent.

_The gate to Hell_

_Why must I destroy this wall…?_

Eileen was bending forward, looking at the dent with a curious expression on her face. "That's strange," she said.

"That wasn't there when I moved in," I said. "Nor was the graffiti."

"No, it's not that," she said. "It's the wall."

_The wall?_ I scanned it quickly, but it seemed like a normal enough wall. "What about it?"

"This wall shouldn't be here."

"What do you mean?"

She straightened up. "Just what I said. Your apartment is too small. All of the apartments are laid out the same, right? So, your hallway is too short."

Yeah, that agreed with what I'd noticed earlier…everybody had two doors off of each side of the hallway in their apartments, not one. I was the only one with such a short hallway. I hadn't really thought about it until today…I mean, I'd seen people moving around in their apartments, in multiple rooms, but I hadn't wondered why everybody had more windows than I had. _Why_ that hadn't ever occurred to me was a good question, actually. I'd pretty much taken the place as it was. Many of the furnishings had been there when I'd moved in, and I'd left it almost like I'd found it. Never questioned any of it because I'd never had a need to. But it wasn't as if we could actually get through the wall now anyway, so we left it alone.

We headed into the bedroom. Just as out front, some things were the same and some were different. The same desk and chest of drawers and bed were there, but the desk was nearly filled by a huge red typewriter. It was the only point of color in the room, apart from the red notes scattered on the table and floor.

"Joseph?" Eileen asked as I picked one up.

"Yeah."

The contents of the note chilled me to the bone.

_What's with this room?  
It's covered in blood and rust…  
This is my room…  
But what the hell happened to it…?  
This room…  
Is it really my room…?  
It's in terrible shape…  
The air is so heavy…My head hurts…  
Creepy…It looks like a face.  
What the hell am I writing…?_

_August 2 – Joseph_

The note in itself was weird enough. But what really got me was that I knew those words. They were _my_ words, from the nightmare, when I'd woken up and seen the room covered in red rust. I'd had the same nightmare every night, and usually when I woke up after it was over the details were fuzzy, but now I remembered all of it. Every image, every moment was passing in front of my eyes…the picture of twenty-one corpses over the couch, the orange crud all over everything, the sealed doors…and a photograph of some guy behind the floor lamp who I hadn't recognized in the dream but who I knew now, of course. It was a picture of me. There's no way that I wouldn't have recognized myself in my own dream. No way. But…

_But Joseph wouldn't have known me from Adam._

It hadn't been my dream, then. Not my dream at all. Not _a_ dream at all. Funny how the unimaginable came so readily to mind now. What I'd seen…what I'd seen were Joseph's last few minutes of life, before the ghost crawled on top of him and he was never seen again. _Oh my God._

"Henry!"

Eileen was tugging on my arm, hard.

"Are you OK?"

"Yeah. Sorry."

I tried my hardest to push the images from my head, and picked up another red paper from the floor. Joseph was also talking about breaking down a wall…and other things, too.

_When the bell rings, Eileen ≈ mother's body, blood._

_August 4 – Joseph_

And then, another note.

_The Crimson Tome_  
"_Bury part of the Conjurer's mother's flesh within the true body of the Conjurer."  
Part of the flesh ≈ __super's room?_

_August 5 – Joseph_

Things were going to make sense now. I could feel it. Joseph was telling me something, something very important. There were multiple things to think about…the wall that he'd tried to get through, and the body and mother's flesh and the eight spears. Did this mean that I had to find a way to break through this wall, where he'd failed after trying for days and days? Or, should I try to figure out the flesh and spears? Part of the flesh in the super's room…well, it did look as though we'd be going back out there again after all. Lucky us. Too bad I had no idea where to start. I walked down the hallway toward my – Joseph's – couch to think it over, with Eileen just behind me.

* * *

Something was different when I reached the end of the hallway. There was a dripping sound coming from somewhere, but I couldn't see where. Whatever it was, it was splashing onto what sounded like damp carpet. Eileen and I both looked around for it, but nothing seemed to have changed…then I heard her gasp, and I spun around.

"It's him!"

She was looking up (_up again_), at a large, black blob hanging down from the ceiling where the hallway joined the front area, by the corner of the kitchen island. I peered at it for a moment before I realized that it wasn't just a blob…it was a _head_ sticking down out of the ceiling. A head and shoulders actually, black and smooth as if carved from obsidian, facing toward us, motionless. The dripping was coming from the top (now the bottom) of the head. There was a black puddle on the carpet below it. Both of us stared at it in surprise for a second or two. Then, a voice echoed through the room, but the lips did not move.

"You've done well to make it this far."

The voice was low and resonant. I recognized it from the phone call in my bedroom earlier...it sounded almost the same. Then I realized who Eileen had been referring to, who this was. This was the man that I'd wanted to meet all day. The man whose notes and keys had been responsible for getting both of us to this point in one piece. The man to whom we both owed our lives.

_Yes, I wanted to meet you, but not like this…I'm sorry that it had to end that way for you, Joseph._

"Let me tell you something about 'him', Walter Sullivan."

I squeezed Eileen's hand as Joseph began to speak. He explained that Walter had done everything – the Holy Assumption, the killings, _everything_ – so that he could free the apartment from this world to be his mother. He wanted this so badly that he'd caused his "child self"—little Walter – to join us in our shared hell, and now it was up to us to stop him. Them. I still didn't understand how he had managed to do all of that, but the end result was very, very clear.

_So we'd been right after all…he really wants to bring Hell to earth. And we're the only ones left in his way. Eileen and me._

"Number 20… The Mother Reborn….Eileen Galvin…"

I looked back at her. She stared up at Joseph without fear, without panic, but with an angry fire in her eye that told me that nothing was going to stop her but death.

"Number 21…The Receiver of Wisdom…Henry Townshend…"

I turned back at the sound of my own name. Pavlovian reaction, I guess.

"Even now…it may not be…too late. Follow the Crimson Tome…Stop him…If not, wherever you run…he will catch you…"

_We know that by now…we know. And we've been everywhere, twice. There's nowhere left to run._

"Find him…his…true location…it must be nearby. You must…kill him…"

_His true location…what do you mean? _Then I remembered the empty casket in the forest.

"Hurry…she's being taken over…she's Number 20…The Mother Reborn. The Crimson Tome…obey the Crimson Tome…kill him…must…kill him…"

Joseph's voice trailed off after a while, and we were left standing there as his face gradually melted away. All that was left was a shapeless black lump hanging from the ceiling. Finally, I turned away and sat on the table, and Eileen plopped down in the chair next to me and leaned against me.

"Well," she said.

"Well."

"What now?"

"We know what we have to do. Kind of." I picked up the Crimson Tome, and it fell open to that same page, of course. "These spears that we have to find…there are eight of them. I don't know for sure where we're going next, but if I'm right, we'll end up back at the apartments. They may be there."

"Given all that stuff he said about the super's room, it sounds as though we'll have to pay Frank a visit, too."

"Yeah."

"Hope he's not in one of his moods."

I smiled. "He probably won't even be there. Last time I went, nobody was there but me and Walter…and you."

Silence, then…

"Mother's flesh," she muttered.

"What about it?"

"Henry, hand me that story book again."

She flipped to the end, and her chipped nail traced the words on the page. "When the baby looked into his hand, he saw that the magical cord was lying there…"

_Click._

"Cord. Eileen, that's gotta be it. I saw you and Frank talking in the hall, when he tried to unlock my door. He said something about an umbilical cord, didn't he?"

"…an umbilical cord. Yeah. I remember now. But what…"

"Who found little Walter? After he was born?"

"Frank."

"And when he did, he found the umbilical cord with him. He told me so, in his diary. He kept it, too, in a box."

"Why?"

"Don't know. But my grandmother did the same for my mother. It's a traditional thing in some Japanese families – "

"You have a Japanese grandmother?" She sat up and smiled at me. "I didn't know that."

"I used to. She died when I was little."

"Oh. I'm sorry."

"Thanks. It's OK. Anyway, the cord...I don't know why Frank kept it. But he did."

"And he said that that cord was starting to smell awful. It weirded me out at the time, I remember that."

"And when I was in his apartment last time, there was a small red wooden box sitting in his front room with such a terrible stench, it could have peeled paint."

She was nodding excitedly. "That's got to be it. That's the cord in the book. It could be part of the mother's flesh."

Now, we were getting somewhere. "Joseph seemed to think so. So, if we can get that, that's part of the puzzle solved."

"That leaves the whole 'where's Walter?' thing."

"Yeah. Joseph wasn't talking about grown-up Walter, because he keeps moving around. Same applies to little Walter. If there's a true location, he must be staying in one place. It's got to be his body. Remember the coffin?"

"Yeah. Empty. And it had to be his, what with the _11 / 21_ on it. So somebody took his body."

_Click click click._ "Heavy thumps and bumps coming from 302, a few days after he was seen carrying a heavy bag and some weird objects up. Ten guesses what was in the bag."

Eileen shivered. "That has to be a weird feeling."

"What? Rising from the grave and visiting your Mom-with-a-view with occult paraphernalia and your own dead body in a bag?"

"Well, yeah, but…I mean, staring your own corpse in the face. That's gotta be unreal."

_Yeah, it is._ I opened my mouth, then closed it again. Sure wasn't going to tell her about _that_. "But that's probably where he took dead Walter. And none of them were ever seen again…"

_Oh...oh __**shit.**_

Eileen figured it out at the same moment that I did. And you can too, I'm sure. Anybody can. After all, if this had been a one-way trip…

"Well," she said flatly, looking at the story book in her hands. "Guess that explains the wall."

"And why Joseph was trying to get through it. I guess that means…hell." _Damn. _

"We're going to have to, too," she said. "Or you will, since I can't go through the Holes."

"Still…how?" I felt that oh-so-familiar sinking feeling coming. _Here we go again…_

"Don't know. Hey, maybe you can finally use that pickaxe of yours. That should smash through."

"Through a normal wall, yeah. But even the High and Mighty Pickaxe of Despair – " _Despair. Joseph's pickaxe._ " – couldn't get it done for Joseph. In the regular world, yeah, no problem, but not here. I mean, _look_ at that wall," I babbled tiredly, waving my hand vaguely at the hallway. She could see the wall from there, even if I couldn't. "There's no way that I can get through there if he couldn't. Not without days and days of – "

"Henry."

Her tone made me stop immediately. She was leaning forward, staring at _something._

"Henry…look at the _wall_…"

We got up and made our way around the wet patch on the floor. The wall was still there, as was the writing. But stuck in the rough sheetrock was another pickaxe. I made my way to it and pulled it out of the wall. My fingers traced letters carved into the handle.

_Hope_

_So, if Despair was __**Joseph's**__ pickaxe…_

Fine. Hope it said, and hope I would. I swung it at the wall, and nothing happened. I did it again, with the same result. So much for that. That was useless…now I had two pickaxes and no hole. Completely useless. We had to be missing something…

"Two pickaxes," I said to Eileen. Then it hit me. "_Two_ pickaxes. And…"

"…_two walls._"

Through the open bathroom door, I saw a Hole by the sink, in the same place that the first Hole had been in my apartment. I jerked my head toward it. "There's a Hole in there. Eileen…"

"Go," she said. She practically pushed me into the bathroom, and off I went.


	32. Joseph, Walter and the door

Red headache, again. But I was out of candles just then, and the medallion I'd put on earlier burst into pieces as I was waking up. I couldn't do much but get the hell out of bed, out of range of the bald-headed ghost who was pushing his way through the wall above my headboard, with apparently social intentions. Thanks, but no thanks. He was dripping goo down the walls, too, and it seemed as good a time as any to open the door and get the hell out of there. I had things I had to do, but if he was going to be hanging out there every time I came back through a Hole, I'd have to take care of him sooner rather than later.

Just as I was reaching into the chest from the hallway side to grab a candle, I heard a loud crash somewhere behind me. The sound seemed to be muffled by a door, so I checked the bathroom and bedroom again. Nope…the bathroom was still full of the same old debris, and everything was still in place in the bedroom, including the big supernatural wall ornament.

When I opened the door of the laundry room, the cause of the noise became clear. The ghost was making himself at home in there, too, but I managed to ignore him for a minute when I saw the problem. There had been a large cardboard box on the top shelf above the dryer when I'd moved in, and in the two years since I hadn't gotten around to going through it and throwing the junk away. Yeah, that was how little I had cared about that stuff. Anyway, that box had ripped just now, and it had spilled books and papers all over the floor of the laundry room. A few were already soaking up the blood from the dryer.

One piece of paper had landed on a small box by the shelves that held my toolbox, and I picked it up. It was a letter. I knew the handwriting, of course.

_He used this place as the locus for the creation of his world.  
I'm certain he must have performed the "Ritual of the Holy Assumption" near here._

Joseph…don't you hate it when you're right? I know I do now…

_But I'm not strong enough to stop him any more…  
He locked me up in this room and played with me just like a toy…  
My eyes are starting to go blind…  
The pain…  
I can feel my body starting to die…_

God, Joseph…

_But…things are taken care of…  
Whoever lives here after me…  
You'll be the 21__st__, the last of the sacrifices…  
I leave it up to you…_

There are still so many unanswered questions that remain, so many loose ends and ambiguities. But one of the most persistent is just how Joseph was able to do what he did for me. Did Walter allow him to, so that I could get through everything without getting killed until he was ready for me? Or did Joseph manage it on his own, somehow? Was he one of those forces that pushed through the boundaries between worlds and interfered with Walter's plans? I have this feeling that, if so, he did a lot more than just leave me notes. More than I ever suspected. I'll never know, of course…and I wish that I could.

_When the bell tolls,  
The ritual begins.  
Eileen ≈ mother's body, blood.  
Part of the mother's flesh ≈ super's room.  
This is all I've been able to figure out.  
I hope that this letter gets to you in time…_

_Joseph Schreiber_

Joseph knew no more, which meant that there was probably no more to know. It was like he said. The last part was up to me now, me and Eileen. I had to smile to myself.

_At least I've been able to keep her alive up to this point, Joseph. Even if…even if nothing else, I've managed that. And I'm going to do everything I can to make sure that we don't lose this fight. We've both worked too hard for this, you and me. All of those notes you've left me…they've gotten me through everything. _

_Your work – your death – won't have been in vain. I promise you that._

* * *

I was lost in thought as I opened the door and left the laundry room, letter in hand. Then, my eye caught the back wall of the hallway, and reminded me of what I had to do. I folded the letter into my notebook. Nothing new anywhere else in my place. Time to see what had actually happened to the rest of my apartment. I could always exorcise the Jolly Dead Giant later, before I went back through the Hole. I faced the wall, lifted the pickaxe, took a deep breath and let fly.

The wall caved in cleanly, with a _CRUNCH_ and a puff of airborne debris. I dropped the pickaxe and covered my eyes as I stepped back to let things settle. That was way too easy…but there it was, an oval hole with nice clean edges, about three feet tall. Pieces of broken wall littered the floor, but the pickaxe itself had vanished. At least I had another in my chest, in case it was needed. Time to finally see what lay beyond. So, I steeled myself, bent over and stepped through the hole.

It was dark. I couldn't see a thing as I stood up. Then the smell hit my nose, and I nearly lost whatever remained in my stomach all over the wood boards of the floor. And I'd thought that the stink of the umbilical cord was bad…this was the same damn stench as before, the usual blood and rot and mildew, but concentrated by years of confinement and magnified, many, many times stronger. The air was like acid. I closed my eyes to shut out the stinging fumes, and groped for something to hold on to. I thought that I was going to pass out, so I concentrated on trying to remember which way it was to the hole that led to the hallway. But after a few seconds the stench became weaker, and I realized that I was going to make it.

I was holding onto a freestanding metal shelf. There were bottles on the shelf, things that looked like chemicals and solvents and stuff like that, all covered in years of dust. I couldn't read any of the labels in the dark. In front of me was another shelf, just like the first, that had fallen over. That shelf was empty, as was its twin a few feet in front of it. I took my hand from my mouth and tried to breathe, but it was almost too much for me.

Just then, an empty plastic bottle fell from the shelf. It hit the floor with a hollow _thunk_, and its cap popped off and rolled across the room. I watched it roll along, and saw it pass a round hole in the floor with liquid black goo and something else in it. A bright light was coming from somewhere to the side, and as I looked up I saw…

You're not going to believe this. Nobody would believe this. _I_ barely believe it. But I told you that back at the beginning, if I remember correctly, and so that's too bad. For both of us.

The light was coming from a refrigerator, which was still running, with its door standing wide open. Inside were translucent plastic bags and bottles, their contents gleaming wetly red in the diffuse light of the refrigerator. They were neatly labeled and organized, but I couldn't make out the writing on them, and I had no desire or need to. I knew what was in there already. But that wasn't the unbelievable part. Next to the refrigerator, partly hidden behind its door, was an enormous cross of metal and wood, standing with its base in the hole. It dwarfed everything else in the room. Oily black feathers adorned the crossbar, and translucent organic tubing was draped around it like the paper streamers from the birthday party in the buildings. On this cross…

…_God…if there is a God…how could You let such a thing be?_...

…on this cross was Walter. For real, this time. He hung there, white as paper, with his long pale hair streaming greasily over his shoulders (just like in the picture on my bedroom wall). His mouth was open and his eyes were bulging, and some of the flesh around his nose and mouth had rotted and fallen away. One hand was dangling limply, and the other was half-raised in front of him as if in supplication. His feet were bare but for the cuts, deep red lines on pale, bloodless skin. You know what they said already.

_**11 / 21**_

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we'd found his true location. All of these years…while Joseph had lived here, and worked here, and died here, and then when I'd been happily whiling away my hours in ignorance at my desk just a few feet away, this half-mummified corpse had been perched on its cross, quietly rotting, a relic of whatever godawful ritual Walter had undertaken in here ten years ago. How well was this place made? I had never smelled a thing, never seen or heard a thing, never suspected anything at all. They just don't make buildings like that any more. So I hear. Or maybe it had been magically sealed, like my room had been, like Joseph's room had been. I don't know. But I had never had the slightest idea that he was back there…never.

Anyway…

So here I was, face to face with the real Walter. It was almost a relief to see him in the flesh, so to speak, to know that the entity chasing me and Eileen around for the last day or so actually had been human once, and had had a body...and that he'd been vulnerable back then. I could see the jagged tear in the side of his neck where he'd jabbed the spoon into his artery. He was wrapped in musty black grave clothes that hung off of him in well-worn folds…but his black coat looked very familiar.

This, then, was the Conjurer's flesh. At least I knew where _that_ was. Safe and sound and very, very dead in my back room, and definitely not going anywhere soon. One down.

The rest of the room held more bottles of chemicals on shelves, and a couple of tables by the blacked-out window. One of the tables was set up with two candles and a cloth, and some strange objects that I didn't dare touch...a bowl, a glass vial with a milky white liquid in it, a carved black goblet, and a book.

_This must be the White Oil and the Black Cup from the ritual. I don't know what the rest of it is, and I don't really want to know._

The other table held a huge knife, three or four feet long, with a strangely shaped handle. It looked heavy and imposing, and I could tell that it wouldn't be easy to lift and swing…at least, not for any normal person. It struck me then how only a few simple items were needed to gain power over life and death. A knife, a cup, a vial…in the right hands, they could do the impossible. And I was looking up into the face of the man who had done it. He looked so ordinary, hanging there like that. You'd never have guessed…

One side of his coat was drooping heavily, as if weighed down by something massive. Sure enough, there was a pocket there, and the pocket was rounded and bulging with something heavy and pointy. It gaped open in front of me. Did I dare? Well, given that I needed all the help I could get, I didn't have a choice.

I slid my hand into the pocket and carefully rummaged around. Whatever it was was cold and metallic…and had lots of little squared-off edges. The shape was familiar, but I couldn't place it right away. It took my tired brain much longer than it should have to make the connection.

_...no. It couldn't be._

There was a large metal ring, too, and I hooked my finger through it as I drew the object upward and out. It was heavy. Heavy enough…

_...can't be. Wouldn't be._

My mind couldn't believe what my fingers were telling it so plainly. The thing emerged from Walter's pocket and glinted in the light from the fridge, clinking gently as its components settled into place.

_It is._

Dangling from my finger was a keyring. It held four small keys, unlabeled but for a single tag hanging off of the ring:

_Liberation_

My hands were shaking violently, and I nearly dropped the keys into the puddle of black goo. I crushed them into my palm and somehow managed to get out of the room without braining myself on the edge of the hole or banging my shins. Suddenly, Uncle Fester in the living room wall didn't look so scary any more. Nothing did. I strode down the hall, feeling better than I had in hours, and turned to the door as I had that morning. I finally faced my first and greatest adversary on equal terms now, keys in hand.

_This is it._

I took a deep breath and slid a key into the nearest lock.

_Click._

The lock sprang from the chains as if overjoyed to be free of its burden. _You're not the only one._

Lock number two. _Click._

Lock number three. _Click._ It jumped out and smacked me on the leg, but I didn't care.

And lock number four. _Click._

The chains were free, and as I watched they slithered like metallic snakes through the loops and unwound themselves from the door. It was really happening. I'd given up on the door so long ago that it seemed unreal, the idea of actually being able to _open_ it. I couldn't let myself believe my own eyes…but it was real, it was _real!_

_Oh my God…oh Jesus…oh God…_

I fell to my knees then, and my tired, tired brain saw the chains finally loosen and drop, and the door creaked and slowly swung open to a beautiful, pristine white hallway, and I got to my feet and walked out of the door and I was free and happy and none of this had ever happened and hey, I had a date with Eileen for dinner at Fuseli's tonight and it was going to be a wonderful weekend...

When my head hit the floor, it jarred me back to reality, such as it was. I found myself sitting on the floor of my apartment, looking at the same old door, but now the chains were loosened and awaiting removal.

_You're not done yet, Henry...not yet. Just one more thing._

Just one more thing, you see, because perhaps when my door opened that would mean the end of the nightmare. Perhaps, now that I'd found those keys, I wouldn't have to worry about that stinking umbilical cord in Frank's apartment and the eight spears and...well, there was still the problem of the ten-years-old dead body in my back room, but I'd figure out some way of dealing with that once I was really free. But before that, I'd need to figure out how to get Eileen back out somehow…maybe that second pickaxe would come in handy on the other wall.

I was on my feet in a second, clawing at the chains and ripping them out of their loops and feeling them pooling on my boots. Even that weight was comforting. After a while, the chains all lay on the floor, and I gathered them up and took them into the laundry room. Old Baldy was in the wall above the washer still, and as I dumped the pile of metal onto a shelf he growled at me and drooled on my head a little, but I didn't care.

The moment of truth was here. I checked to make sure that the door was unlocked (it was, lock and deadbolt, same as it had been since all of this had started), grasped the knob, and _pulled_...

...and nothing happened. The door was stuck.

_Has to be. It's been a few days since you opened it. Try again._

I pulled again. Same result.

_...this isn't right..._

Yanked on the knob, turned it back and forth, put all of my weight on it and leaned backward…nothing.

_No. NO! __**NO!**_

This couldn't be happening! Not after all that I'd been through. Walter, you sick, twisted _bastard!_ It pushed me over the edge. I was screaming, pounding on the door...and then I remembered.

_This. Door. Opens. OUTWARD. You. Goddamn. Moron._

Thank God Eileen wasn't there to see that particular moment of genius. I could have kicked myself, but I was too damn tired to.

* * *

The door was still stuck, but I could feel it give way when I pushed, so I knew that a good heavy impact would probably be enough to burst it open. I peered through the peephole to make sure that nobody was outside (nobody out there, no psychotic killers or apparitions of my undead self, nothing but the nineteen-and-a-half handprints on the wall, same as usual), took a few steps back and a deep breath, and threw myself into the door, shoulder first.

It

_opened_

and I nearly fell flat on my face onto the linoleum floor of the hallway outside. I was able to catch myself with my leg and ended up staring at the crud on the floor. The floor was always a little cruddy, but that was OK. Just the usual dirt that got tracked in and out. Frank was good about sweeping, although mopping wasn't one of his favorite activities, but it was never too bad...

...it was never bad. It was never _this_ bad.

The hallway floor outside my door was linoleum, white with a pattern of black lines and squares. _This_ hallway floor was like that for a few feet around my door, and then it degraded to bloody carpet and chain link.

_No._

The wall across from my door wasn't white any more, and it didn't have that long wooden rail running around at waist height to keep us unruly tenants from doing damage to the paint. Well, it kind of did, but what there was was in danger of being submerged in the throbbing red bubbly _goo_ that coated all of the walls. _Again._ The window just to the left of my door that I always looked through when I went out was blocked. So was the one to the right. _Again._ And the familiar howls were echoing down the hallways..._again._

_Not here too._

_Again._

I'd been a fool. _Again._ Hoping for a quick way out, when I should have realized that Walter was never going to do us any favors. Never. I was going to have to get that box out of Frank's apartment, and find those eight spears, wherever they were, and somehow find my way around the bars that dripped like stalactites (or stalagmites...I never could remember the difference) from the ceiling about ten feet down the hallway toward the stairs.

I could almost hear that soft, slurring, unearthly voice. _You thought this would be easy? Never, Henry. Life's not easy. Anything worth having is __**never**__ easy, boy. Suck it up and get over it and get moving already!_

No...that wasn't Walter's voice...

There was somebody else in the hallway. I snapped my head around to the left to see a lone figure shuffling along in a familiar rhythm. Step...drag...step...drag...I realized now that the Holes wouldn't be an issue for us any more. She was here, too, and we could do this together. We'd have to.

"Eileen!" I called.

_Again._


	33. South Ashfield Heights again 1

Getting impatient? Yeah. I'd be too. Just when you think that you're done with the longest day of your life, there's always something else to deal with. Sorry. I _am_ nearing the end of my story. Hang in there. I'm almost done.

* * *

When last we saw our valiant heroes, they were stuck in a goddamn blood-drenched apartment building infested by the undead, their hopes of a quick escape dashed and their dreams of getting the hell out of this nightmare crushed like a fat red slug under Henry's boot. Now, they faced a journey of unknown duration and uncertain usefulness, the latest in a long line of such…but hell, it's not like they had anything better to do, did they?

Eileen was looking tired, but that wasn't anything new. She limped up to me.

"Always told Frank that this place was going to hell in a handbasket," she said wearily, looking around. "But I was referring to the plumbing."

"You have this way of being right. Bet he hates that."

"So do you. How about once we're out of here, we both get on his case about the air conditioning on this floor?"

"You mean, the way it always dies on the hottest day of the year like clockwork?"

"Yeah. Among other things."

"Deal."

I leaned against a clean patch of wall by my door for a minute. She sighed, and leaned back next to me. We rested there and watched weird bloody fabric-wrapped things twitch on the floor on the other side of the bars.

"Any luck with the pickaxe?" she asked after a minute.

"Yeah. He's back there, all right."

"His..."

"Yeah. Stinks to high heaven, too."

"I know. I can smell it on you. Even out here."

"Sorry."

"No problem."

"Anyway, he's back there, along with a fridge full of blood and a few things that probably can't be ordered through church-supply catalogs. Oh, and the set of keys that got that damn door open," I said, poking a thumb at the innocent-looking door standing half-open beside me.

"Congratulations, I guess."

"Thanks."

"No spears."

"No spears."

Silence. We stared at the bars that dripped like icing from the ceiling of the hallway between her place and mine.

"I'd invite you over, but I really can't just now," she said, squinting down the hallway.

"I'll take a raincheck, thanks."

"Any time. Too bad, though. I'm told that I make a killer cup of coffee."

"Could use some right now, but I'm all out."

"Me too. Oh well. Always when you need it the most. That's the way it goes, huh?"

When you're frazzled, confused, disoriented and many, many miles past tired, you get a little punchy. That's how we were then...punchy. It's like the light-headedness you get from being up very, very late, or from holding your breath for too long...you're just kind of floating along, letting things happen around you, not worrying about anything. You can't concentrate on anything, and you don't really care. Nothing is serious, and everything is funny in some way. That's how we were then.

"You know," I said, "if you want to crash on my couch, you can now."

"Hell no. Like I said before, I'm sticking with you."

"You sure?"

"Very."

"Just as well. I haven't cleaned in a while. Toilet's jammed up and the tub's full of blood."

"Ugh. Bachelors."

Pause.

"Care for a stroll, Miss Galvin?"

"My pleasure, Mr. Townshend."

"Looks like we'll have to visit Mike's apartment," I said. "That's the only way to go from here."

"Mind if I keep my innocent eyes averted while we're in there?"

"If I were you, I would. His magazine collection is scary."

So, we lifted ourselves off of the wall and ambled down the hallway to see Mike.

He wasn't there, of course, but we were rudely greeted by a lone double-headed baby. That wasn't so bad until the moment I lifted my foot out of what had been one of its skulls and realized that something else was behind me. I could feel its presence, and I swung around to find myself face to face with the ugliest butt I'd ever seen. Seriously. You know I'm not kidding, right? About any of this. This thing was walking on its hands, just like the babies did, but in place of its face was just a set of gray, flabby cheeks...and down below, there was a lonely little head hanging like genitalia. What, was it going to break wind on me or something?

Then, I remembered about the hands a split second before one of them came my way and slammed me into the wall. That's what I got for letting my guard down. Eileen started swinging at it with her nightstick, and managed to back it up against the wall before I was able to get over there and axe it to death. We stood over the thing wondering what the hell had just happened. The sounds of a woman crying and gasping were coming from somewhere…they sounded like they had in my bathroom hours before.

"Weird. Beyond weird," she said. She poked the dead thing with her nightstick.

"Never seen one of those before."

"What is it anyway?"

"No idea."

She smiled at me. "I know."

"What?"

"It's a butthead, isn't it?"

I laughed. That was the perfect name for them, and from then on I thought of them as buttheads. If you'd have seen them, you'd have thought the same thing. Then, we were distracted by the sound of something rumbling around, and up the stairs (there were stairs in this room now, going down) came another double-headed baby. Fortunately, I got the jump on it from above, and it wasn't too much trouble.

We ran down the stairs to 201, but it was deserted. There were signs on the walls.

_Any time now…  
__Soon, soon!  
The ritual…The ritual…  
Soon it will begin…  
Very soon now…  
Soon…  
It's starting…  
_

"Not if _we_ can help it," Eileen muttered.

* * *

The second floor hallway looked just like the third floor hall had. Bars blocked things past 202, and so it looked as though we'd be heading there next. As we approached, I heard the click of a gun, and grabbed for Eileen. We ducked behind a trash can sitting against the wall the moment before a bullet zinged past our heads, and I pushed her against the wall and covered her.

A familiar low laugh came down the hallway. Eileen leaned past me and peered around the can. "Him," she whispered.

"Yeah. Gotta run for it. I'll get the door open, you get inside as fast as you can."

"OK."

Somehow, we managed to get ourselves through the door of 202 with only a scratch to my shoulder. 202 was quiet, and so, so normal-looking, if you ignored the paintings piled in every available space and the huge hole in the wall in the front room. Eileen headed straight for it, but I grabbed her wrist.

"Hang on. We need to see what's in here."

She nodded. There wasn't much, as it turned out, but for...

"Look what I found on the floor," I said triumphantly as I walked out from the back bedroom.

"Number five," she said, touching the rough wooden handle of the sword. "Five for five. Hopefully you won't need it."

"You know," I said, as I shoved it into my belt, "I almost wish I would."

"How?"

"There's a serial killer out there in bad need of one."

"Yeah. Through the gut."

As we stepped through the hole in the wall, I noticed the exposed wooden beams and the thin drywall, and made a mental note to get that goddamn stinking body out of my back room as quickly as possible after this, in case my walls reverted back to their probable normal, non-impermeable state once this was all over.

203 was both quiet and empty, but the same couldn't be said of 204. As soon as we entered, I saw the worked metal grille that blocked off the hallway, and I remembered how intricate and detailed it had been when I'd been in there before. It was beautiful and delicate, like a bicycle wheel, even though some of the spokes were bent and broken. As I wandered past it, though, I ___didn't_ remember the little space at the other end of the hallway that was just big enough to hold a man. But I ___did_ feel the bullet that zinged past me, slicing the arm of my shirt, and the other one that grazed...the right side of my posterior. That's what I got for not paying attention. Detecting a theme here? Luckily, I was able to twist around and dive out of the line of fire. I ended up lying at the foot of the door with a sore backside, a faceful of carpet, and a worried Eileen stooping over me.

"Drink?"

"Please."

Naturally, there was a brown bottle right there on the kitchen counter, and naturally I downed half of the thing in one gulp. The little crawling sensations started right away, and it didn't take long. Same as before, folks, move right along...except that when Eileen bent to help me sit up, I wouldn't do it for the simple reason that it would be a very bad idea for several seconds more.

"Come on, Henry. That old Berber can't taste good."

"It's fine," I said through the cheek flesh squashed against the floor.

"No it isn't. I'd know, remember?"

"I need the fiber in my diet." Like I said...punchy.

"Henry…"

"OK, you win. I'm staying here, though."

"Why won't you..." Then, she must have seen the blood on my jeans. I could almost hear the smirk on her face. ___Male ego kicking in... _

"You know, you ___could_ have said something."

"Rather keep you guessing." The worms had done their work (interesting, isn't it...worms in your flesh restoring life, worms eating your flesh after you're dead), and I turned over onto the other side to let the soreness dissipate. "It's not enough to worry about, anyway."

"No, you just didn't want me looking at your butt."

"That too."

"Like I haven't been following it around for hours already."

"That's beside the point," I said, pushing myself up to my hands and knees. "There's nothing in here anyway. Let's go."

But when we walked through the doors to the stairwell and found ourselves face to face with five of the burping gray Amazons from the hospital, joking around was the last thing on our minds. I wasn't fast enough to keep them from rushing us all at once. That hurt...even with Eileen backing me up on leather nightstick, that hurt. At one point, they had me surrounded, beating on me with their pipes, and there was no way out. I covered my head with my arms and thought that this would be a very, very strange and stupid way to go, after all we'd been through. Just then Eileen came through swinging with the nightstick and cleared an escape route, and I was able to get the axe up and in action. Eventually they all lay dead at our feet, and I finished off the bottle and we continued on.

Upstairs were 304, which had infestations and one or two useful things, and Eileen's place, which was still soaked in blood.

"Frank's going to have a fit when he sees this," she said, surveying the waist-high streaks of blood that lined the front hallway and coated the kitchen counter. "This isn't ever coming out of the wallpaper."

"Not as bad as when he sees ___this_," I said as I turned to take on the Amazon striding down the hallway as if it owned the place. It went down quickly, though.

"He'll deal," she muttered, wiping the nightstick on the wall.

That taken care of, I surveyed the territory. There was a clothes rack by the hallway with a few hangers and a skirt, a couch and TV and the other usual stuff, a few plants and an area rug, and the ugliest wallpaper I'd seen this side of the 1970s. ___If Frank does have to replace this wallpaper, no great loss._

"Thought you'd been in here before," Eileen said.

"Yeah, but…I didn't really look around much last time."

"Oh."

"So this is how the other half lives."

"Yeah. Very similar to a guy's place, but less, you know, gray and depressing."

"Joseph's place was _not _my fault. My apartment is nowhere near that gray."

Her eyebrow went up.

"Well…the furniture isn't gray." Which was the honest truth. Mostly.

"You're telling me," she said, "that you've never been in a single woman's apartment before?"

"No, I haven't." It was amazing, to feel so free that I could tell her that.

"You don't date much."

"No." Time to move on. I peered down the hallway. "Two doors on each side. Just like everywhere else."

"Two doors, each side. Bathroom and spare room on the right, bedroom and guest room on the left."

My turn. "Guest room, huh?" I waggled an eyebrow at her.

She punched me in the shoulder. "Family visits, doofus. Not that it's any of your business anyway."

"No."

Then, I felt her hand on my arm.

"Look, Henry," she said, "I've been thinking. When this is all over, if you don't want to go back to your place...you can crash with me." You know, she looked as if she really meant it, too. "The guest room's yours for as long as you need it."

I took it at face value. "Thanks. I might take you up on that."

* * *

The hallway on the other side of the second floor was empty but for bars between 206 and 207. 205 was uninteresting, but I should have known that that meant that 206 wouldn't be so quiet.

And it wasn't. Unless your idea of quiet is the total silence that fell after we barreled through the door and screeched to a halt at the tip of Walter's gun.

In the silence, I could hear Eileen's heavy breathing behind me. This was between me and him. She didn't need to be here for this.

"Go," I whispered to her. "Find the way out. I'll be there in a minute."

Eileen knew that I wouldn't budge on that one, so she made her way down the hallway. I stayed where I was, hands up, staring at the gun muzzle in my face and the two lazy green-yellow eyes behind it.

"Hello again," came that slow voice.

"What do you want _now_?"

"Joseph was right. You've done well to make it this far."

"I'd like to think so," I replied. "No thanks to you, of course."

He lowered the gun before I had to ask him to.

"Now, Henry, that's not fair. Not fair at all," he said, shaking his head. "You act as though I've been trying to kill you."

_Huh? **Haven't** you?_

"Seriously, you've been so ungrateful for all of the help I've given you. It's been a struggle, it really has, keeping those things off of your back."

"Yeah. Either it's been a real struggle, or you haven't been trying all that hard, Walter," I retorted.

"It's not...that's not how I wanted it to be. It was supposed to be…neater, tidier. Not so many loose ends. There have been things from other worlds crossing the boundaries, as well...things that I can't stop. I've been doing what I could, but I can't keep them out forever. I'm sorry about that, Henry."

He sounded sincere. Really sincere. By this time, Eileen was standing in the hallway, waving and gesturing at a doorway next to her, but I ignored her for the time being. This was too good an opportunity to pass up. There was one question that I had to ask.

"So what is the point of all of this, anyway? I mean, we know about the Descent of the Holy Mother and your fixation on my apartment, but why haul us through all of _this_?" I was pretty sure that I knew the answer, but I had to hear it from _him_.

He touched his fingertips together, as I'd seen him do when he was talking to his younger self. "You have read the Scriptures, as I intended, but clearly you have not understood."

"No. Fill me in."

"You and Miss Galvin are the Fourth Sign. You know that. But you don't really understand what that means, or you would not be asking me that question."

"Guess we don't. Mind enlightening us?"

"Of course not. She is the Mother Reborn. With her contribution, the Holy Mother will finally have a vessel through which she can give birth to a glorious new world. By surviving this trial by fire, she has proven her worthiness to serve. And you, Henry...you are the Receiver of Wisdom. Joseph has not been lax in carrying out his duties, I can see, but that's only part of it."

"Part of what?" There was that squirrelly feeling in the pit of my stomach again...

"Part of what you must learn. Some learn by seeing. Others by doing. I believe in both. Don't you?"

Eileen gasped as it hit her, and as often happened, it hit me a split second later. Do I really need to explain? I guess I should...

This meant that all of the running and fighting and bleeding and sweating really _had_ been about me, after all. It never occurred to me that it had, not really. I'd just been a witness to what was going on, no more. Even after Eileen figured out the Receiver of Wisdom business, I had assumed that it only involved things like Joseph's notes and all of that. Understanding why Walter had undertaken the Twenty-One Sacraments ritual. I couldn't do a damn thing about it, but I could at least know _what _he had planned for us.

But now that was what Walter was telling me...that there was more to it than just seeing. He'd had to kill his victims, yes, but why not also take the opportunity to accustom the last one, the Receiver of Wisdom, to the idea? Break him in? Give him the opportunity to do his own share of slaughtering, judging, hunting and all that stuff? Let him suffer as Walter had suffered, let him see into the Conjurer's mind, so that when the time came, he would understand better just what had to be given up for the greater good? After all, if I hadn't given a damn about what would happen to others after I was gone, would I have fought him as hard as I had, even after I'd realized that I probably wasn't going to get out alive? Would I have done everything I could to help Eileen make it this far? Would I be as worn down and tired and potentially receptive to the ideas that he was trying to plant in my head with every step, every action, every monster and every new world?

I'd worked too hard, for too long, to get this far, and that was the plan. I had too much invested in it, just like he had. I had too much to lose by not following through, as he had. And that was what he was banking on...that, in the end, the Receiver of Wisdom would use that wisdom and experience to judge his cause a just one. Then, once I'd evaluated all that I'd seen and validated everything he'd done and stood for, he could persuade me to go willingly like a lamb to the slaughter, in the name of the Holy Mother. For I had seen the evils of his childhood, the evils that came of not having a mother, evils which would be wiped from this world once Mommy came down from heaven or hell or wherever she was and did her thing. All he had to do was show me.

Of course, Walter had been completely wrong about me. I can see why. I'd been a good boy, lived my life passively and done what I was told, more or less, and ultimately I tended to go with the flow. He'd never seen me actively say no to anyone but my father, never seen me actually stand up for myself. I guess that he couldn't imagine how I could possibly resist, how I could say no to what was obviously the right thing to do. Right for him, perhaps, but not right for anyone else. And certainly not right for me or for Eileen.

But now, he was looking at me expectantly.

"It's all very simple, Henry. The Mother provides the flesh, and the Receiver supplies the wisdom. Such is a new world created, a Paradise."

"No," was all I could allow him. This wasn't the time to argue with a brick wall. I backed away, knowing that he wasn't going to kill me just yet. We hadn't reached the end of the apartments, so his plan wasn't complete. And if his plan wasn't complete, that meant he still needed me alive. Eileen, on the other hand...

She motioned me down to the far end of the apartment, and as we pushed through the hole in the back bedroom, his laughter followed us down the hallway.

* * *

We were in Richard's apartment now. The furniture had been thrown against the wall, everything but his electric chair, and the smears of blood on the checked linoleum still seemed fresh. There was no sign of Walter here. We turned up a box of bullets in the back, and so I was actually pretty well-stocked for once, and my pockets were getting full. Time to burn off a few of 'em. There was a butthead in the hallway outside, and filling him full of hot metal was both much more enjoyable and a lot less work than hacking him to death. There were stairs here, too, and we descended to the first floor.

The hallway was just like the others had been. But now, there was a kid's voice, echoing down the hallway, all around us. Little Walter's voice.

"Dad…Dad…where's Dad?"

_He's gone, Walter. He's gone, and he's not coming back…_

"Dad…Dad…I can't see your face…"

I gritted my teeth and tried to block it out.

"Dad...Dad...where's Dad?"

_Stop it...please..._

"Dad...I can't see your face..."

It was annoying and heartbreaking at the same time. I thought it was going to drive me mad.

Thank God for Nurse Rachael and her room on the first floor. She had some good stuff lying around as usual, and between the candle that Eileen had picked up in 206 before and the one on Rachael's counter, I now was back up to two. Plus a first-aid kit, and another little brown pointed vial that Eileen turned around in her hand excitedly.

"This…this is worth its weight in gold," she said slowly. I peered at it, but still couldn't read the label. Apparently, though, she could.

"Do you have any more of these?"

"Only one. I found it in the hospital just before I found you."

"Hold onto this," she said as she tucked it into my shirt pocket. "It'll save your butt sometime."


	34. South Ashfield Heights again 2

That was a strange time for us. Not only were we punchy as hell, but things seemed to waver between encouraging (finding useful things, killing off monsters with only a few hitches) and discouraging…such as what we found when we finally made it to 105, Frank's apartment. The door was blocked in what was obviously Walter's preferred method. I admit, I felt a grim satisfaction when I saw that at least I wasn't the only one on chain detail around here.

"Of course," Eileen grumbled. "Figures that Walter would chain up the door so that we couldn't get in."

"Yeah. So, now not only do we have to figure out the eight spears thing, we also have to get these damn chains off of Frank's door."

"Six of them. You think – "

"Probably." Yeah, we were starting to get good at playing Walter's games.

The chains were old and worn, just like mine, and the locks were vintage as well. They were more loosely draped over the door than mine had been, but still they were going to keep us out for the time being. I ran through the floor plan of South Ashfield Heights in my mind.

"There isn't much left of this building that we haven't been to."

"That we know of. Unless Walter's been doing more remodeling than we've already seen."

I shook my head. "So far, he hasn't been adding on substantially. If anything, he's been either cutting things out or moving them around. This building is only so big. There can't be a lot left, one way or another."

"I hope you're right."

"Me too."

* * *

Out in the foyer, things were also very quiet. The stairs up were still blocked, and the doors out were still stuck, even though I gave 'em the old college try out of sheer pig-headedness.

When I turned back around, Eileen was standing several feet away in the middle of the foyer, with something in her hand. I peered over her shoulder to see. It was an old sketchbook. The pages were yellow and gray with age. She was holding it with her good hand and resting it on her cast. It was open to a drawing done in pencil or something like it …a drawing of a human figure. A kid's drawing. It was a stick figure, fingers and toes pointing out like little spikes, but it was the head that caught my attention. The figure's head was almost triangular in shape. It came to a point on top, and was filled in with black, like a big black iron helmet or something. Weird, huh? "Dad" was written on the bottom of the picture.

_He misses his mother, and thinks his father is a…what? A monster? Can't say I'd blame him for that._

Eileen twitched in front of me, just a little. I felt a wave of heat roll off of her and through my shirt to my skin. Then, her hand loosened its grip on the book, and it fell to the floor with a _thump_. I realized what was happening, and stepped back a second before the red lines erupted into black blobs crawling over her skin. Her head tilted back, farther than I thought possible without

_breaking her neck_

and then she slowly turned to face me. Her single green eye glowed eerily bright against the blackness on her cheeks. Then, her good hand lifted, and she pointed straight at me. I was rooted to the floor. Her mouth opened, and her lips began to move.

"Hen…ry…"

_Oh God. She…her voice. _

"Town…shend…"

_She sounds like…like…_

Truth be told, I can only describe it as sounding like something out of a B-grade horror movie. It was a deep, unearthly voice, with echo effects and everything. You'd probably laugh if you heard it now, but there's a reason that all of those B-movies use that sound – because it will freak the living crap out of you. Which it did then. (No, not literally. Those of you keeping score at home will be glad to know that the boxers were still intact.)

It took me a minute to remember the two candles in my pocket. I managed to get one of them out, but dropped the lighter (yeah, my hands were shaking). So I picked it up again, lit the candle and stood it next to Eileen. For what good it might do her. And it did. The candle burned down quickly, very quickly, and it was on its last inch or so when her hand dropped and her skin cleared up…partially. Not completely. She was too far gone for that. She needed another candle.

As I approached her, she turned away from me and dropped her head into her good hand and started sobbing. Hard. I reached for her, but she threw me off, and I stepped back, confused.

"Eileen…"

"No, Henry."

"But…"

"GO AWAY!"

My lips flapped for a second, and then I found my voice.

"I have another candle…"

She spun around. "It won't do any good! Don't you see?" She shook her head violently. "It won't last forever. It can't. All it is is a stopgap. A temporary fix. Just enough for me to forget that I'm cursed, to let me limp around after you and get in the way and slow you down, to let me…until it happens again, and then I remember. No. I don't want it!"

Tears were streaming down her face, even from under the bandages under her eye, and it tore me up in ways I didn't know were possible. I reached for her automatically. "Eileen…just let me…"

"NO!" she screamed, and she put her hand over her face. We stood like that for a moment. She was breathing hard, fighting for control, and I...I was completely at a loss. I couldn't leave her like this…no. What if something came after her? She was crying too hard to fight, but she didn't want me to help. I didn't know what I should do.

She took a deep breath, then another. Her hand came down, and her expression was as composed as possible under the circumstances. "Henry, I'm sorry. But…I can't. Not right now. I – I can't. Please. Go ahead. I'll stay here." She sounded so tired…

"No, you can't. What if something comes along?"

"Then I'll deal with it. I'm sorry, Henry, but…I just can't deal with you right now. With anything. Go ahead. Give me a few minutes, and I'll be OK. I promise." She turned her back to me and put her face in her hand again.

I thought I understood, but I wasn't sure. She seemed almost embarrassed. No, more than that. Mortified…at what was happening to her. She had no reason to be, though! It wasn't her fault. And anyway, I'd seen this happen to her before. Why didn't she want me around now?

I couldn't understand it...but she clearly needed to be alone for a little while, and an empty room was as good a place as anywhere. I backed up as quietly as I could and pulled open the doors to the other side of the first floor.

* * *

There were four rooms on this side, just as there were on the floor above and the floor above that, and Walter had made sure that there was plenty to do in each one. There was a strange hanging bound figure in the corner of the hall outside the first door, but I ignored it for now and entered the first door on my right.

In 104, there was a shiny new first-aid kit lying on the floor – underneath two sliding wall men who seemed pissed off about something. Hell, if I were tied to a metal frame by my skin and stuck there till the end of time, I'd be pretty annoyed too, but at this point they weren't worth bothering with. Just down the hallway was another of those hanging bodies, suspended in one of the round metal cages that had replaced the smaller rooms in this apartment. They reminded me a little of the bird-cage back in the hospital…but that was a lifetime ago, and these didn't seem to be going anywhere.

So, I took a few seconds to look more closely at the body. It was just like the others I'd seen. It wasn't completely enclosed in the sheet that was bound around it. Its head stuck out of the top of the white cotton, and long blond hair hung to its shoulders. Hair a lot like Walter's, actually…coat-Walter, not rotting-Walter. I swiveled my neck to see if I could see its face, and bumped into it by accident. Then when it spoke, I nearly jumped out of my skin.

"I _told_ you we shouldn't have a baby, didn't I?" it growled in a man's voice...

…and then it disappeared.

Yeah, I'll admit it. My nerves were shot (had been for hours), my patience was gone (ditto), and I ended up plastered to the wall of the cage, with my hands gripping the bars and my eyes nearly popping out of my head, wondering for the hundredth time that day what the _hell_ had just happened. The figure looked like Walter (although I never did get to see its face), but the voice was different.

_It sounded like my father._

But the words weren't his. That wasn't the sort of thing he'd say. He never panicked, never, never raised his voice like that except during our training sessions. So whose were they? The answer came to me.

_Looks like Walter, sounds like a father…so…Walter's father? That means that he…that Walter must have heard him say…_

The wall-men could have been transformed into goddamn circus clowns for all I knew as I stumbled back down the hall and out the door. I snapped back into alertness when the double-headed baby standing outside 103 dropped its hand and started rumbling in my direction, but I didn't care any more, and several bullets and my boot put it out of my misery.

The body hanging in the corner was still there. I stuck my gun out in front of me and prodded it. Nothing happened, so I reached forward and touched its arm. It was cold. "Oh, shut the hell up! You can't blame it all on me!" it snarled, and disappeared like the other had.

I squinted down the hallway. Off in the distance, outside 103, I could see another butthead (_greeeeat…_) and another Walter-father hanging from the ceiling. That made three so far.

_Do the math, Henry. Three you know of…and three rooms you haven't entered yet. If each contains a body like 104 did…_

Six bodies on this side, and six chains on the other side. The _bodies_ were disappearing…

103 was infested with buttheads. The weird thing here was, I actually seemed to be getting good at dodging them, because I was able to push through to the middle of the front room, prod Walter-dad, listen to what it had to say ("Anyway, let's get outta here…I can't stand it any more…") and get the hell out without getting hit once. Maybe that dancing stuff that Eileen had taught me wasn't completely out of the realm of possibility.

102. Uncle Fester had decided to drop by. Time to take out some frustration with the axe and unload some sword-related weight from my belt. He fell under the axe almost as easily as the old lady had. It didn't even occur to me how sick _that_ thought was…by the time it did, I'd smacked Walter-dad upside the head, listened to his spiel ("If that super hears him, we're in trouble. There's something about that guy…I just don't like the look of him…"), and pocketed the bottle of brown goodness on the counter.

Butthead time. As I approached it, I reached in my pocket to find a half-empty box of bullets. Great. Almost out of ammo. Luckily, The Powers That Be had left a brand new box by the trash in the hallway, and so my laziness didn't end up costing me more than a swipe as I was reloading. The version of Walter-dad in the corner was just as grouchy as the others ("Stupid little crybaby…"). No surprise there. That left 101, the gun-nut's room. With my luck, the guns would be real this time, and these buttheads would have figured out how to pull the triggers…

Nope. Thank God, I was wrong. Ha! Bullets in the back room, and the last Walter-dad in a cage near the front.

"Hurry up – get packed!"

And he was gone…and I was done. Right?

Time to check on Eileen.

* * *

When I pushed open the doors to the foyer, Eileen was still facing away from me. She'd picked up the sketchbook again, and was just closing it when I came through. She didn't seem to have heard me, and I didn't want to startle her.

"Eileen?"

Her head shook back and forth. "It's terrible," she said. "That poor little boy…his parents just threw him away, right after he was born."

I said nothing, just kept walking slowly toward her in case…in case of what? I don't know.

"Poor thing." She sighed. "He really thinks that Room 302 is his mother."

"But, Eileen," I said, "he knows better. He knows that his parents left him after his birth. He told me so. Remember?"

She didn't seem to have heard me. "I've gotta…I've gotta help him."

I moved to stand in front of her and took her hand, as gently as I could.

"Eileen, what can you do? What can _we_ do? It's too late. That little boy grew up to be a serial killer. He's killed nineteen people already, including himself, and he nearly killed you."

I brushed her hair back off of her face, and her eye opened and stared into mine. Crying had made it shine even more brilliantly green than before.

"He wants to kill us both," I continued. "Whatever happened, we can't do anything. It's too late. It's been too late since…since before either of us was born."

She smiled.

"Henry, can I ask you a question?"

"Of course."

"How old are you?"

_That_ was unexpected. It took me a while to switch gears, and I blanked. I ended up doing the math. "Um…I'm twenty-eight."

She nodded. "I'm twenty-four. Guess I'm still too soft to say no to him like that."

_No, that's not it…_There's no way that anyone could ever call Eileen soft. Not after what she'd been through, what she'd done that night. She was as tough as they come, and she'd proven it time and time again. It wasn't softness…but whatever it was, I couldn't put words to it just then. It was…it was something that she had in her that I'd never had. Should I have?

There was a tear building up in her eye now. She looked away from me and tried to blink it away. "There's got to be something we can do," she said. "Something." _Why?_

"What?"

"I don't know." She shook her head. "You're right. It's probably too late."

_Time to get going._

"The chains should be gone now," I said. "Let's go."

I squeezed her hand, and we passed through the doors and walked toward Frank's room. The door was clear now, and unlocked.

"Hold your breath," I said, and turned the knob.

The room stank like before, but this time I was prepared for it, and so it wasn't as bad. Eileen blinked and sputtered, though, and started coughing so hard that I knew that we had to get out of there, and fast. The small red wooden box was still there on the bookshelf, and I reached for it…

…and Eileen cried out, and I turned just in time to see her collapse to the floor. Black and red, all over, writhing like snakes across her skin. I had one last candle, and I lit it and put it by her feet and moved to lift her up and hold her steady while the candle did its work.

Too late. She grabbed the nightstick from her belt and started flailing around. I got a few hard blows to the face before I was able to take it from her and throw it across the room, well out of her reach. I pinned her arms as best I could and waited for it to end. It seemed to take forever, and the heat from her skin felt as though it would burn me. I pulled my shirt cuffs over my hands and gritted my teeth and hung on.

Finally, she was still, skin back to its original pink-and-bruised color from hours ago. She took a deep breath, then started sputtering again.

"Can you stand up?" I asked.

"Yeah" – _cough_ – "I think so." She looked up at me, and her fingers traced the places where she'd hit me, but she said nothing.

I helped her to her feet, and grabbed the red wooden box. "This is it," I said. "Let's get the hell out of here."

"Are you sure?"

_Well, what the hell else could it be?_

"Sure enough. Come on."

"You should check. So we don't have to come back in here again."

I was getting pretty impatient by this point. "Fine," I said, and opened the box. Sure enough, inside was a tiny little string of withered tissue, set on a square of stained fabric. As I watched, though, the brown tissue began to turn red, and

_GAAAAAAAAAGH!_

Redness flooded my vision. Redness, and a blinding pain that made ghost auras seem like a stone in my shoe and my persistent headache just a happy memory. My skull was full of white-hot, sharp _pain_, thousands of needles driving through the bone, and I couldn't see or hear or feel anything. The only thing that was in my head was the feeling that my brain was about to blow my head open, and

_A dark room, with windows at the side. Empty but for old carpet and a living, breathing thing on the floor with a huge, melon-shaped body and tiny little arms and legs and a snout and ears like an elephant…and a length of tube running from its navel. An elephant baby, lying alone on a single thin blanket, crying, always crying…_

_Across the room, two people huddled by a doorway. The taller one, a man with short hair and an overcoat, bending toward the shorter one, a woman with long blond hair in a coat and dress. He was talking quickly, hissing at her, and she didn't look well at all…_

I must have dropped the box then. I'm not sure. I do know that I ended up on my knees, head in my hands, trying to push my forehead back into my head where it should be and hoping that, by the grace of God, I would have just _one more second_ to…

To do what?

Eileen was lowering herself to the floor next to me, so, so slowly. Poor Eileen. She put her hand on my back, gently, and then said the single best thing she could have said at that moment, although I'm sure she had no way of knowing that:

"Henry? Are you OK?"

_What do __**you**__ think? Obviously I'm NOT!_

Then, I remembered just how stupid a question that had been when I'd asked it of Cynthia ages ago, as she lay dying in my arms. It was just as pointless now as it had been then. Through the white-hot agony I could feel a little tiny bit of laughter bubble up in my throat, and I knew that I was going to be OK.

The pain was slowly dissipating, and Eileen's hand rubbing circles on my back was doing wonders. I'd be OK in a minute or two…sorry, but this wasn't a job for the brown-bottle elixir of life. This would have to pass on its own.

_Keep your eyes shut, and hold it together, and take it a second at a time…_

Eileen was talking again. "It's Walter…he's crying…" I strained to listen, but my ears were filled with the sound of my own pulsing blood. Surely, I'd have been able to hear _that?_ Her hand was still moving on my back, but more distractedly now. "Even finishing the twenty-one sacraments…it won't help that boy."

_Nothing will,_ I wanted to say, but opening my mouth would let my brain fall out, and I needed my brain…it was important…

She moved behind me, and I realized with horror that she was pulling herself to her feet. I dropped my hands and turned to look. My eyes _didn't_ bulge out of my head, my forehead _didn't_ blow off and scatter gray matter all over the room, and the redness was fading to a light pink hue.

"I'm going back, Henry," she said. "To the room where he is."

I felt her lips touch my hair, and in my haste to turn around I nearly smacked my nose into her chest. She stood up and bent over me, stroking my hair.

"See, we're the only ones," she said slowly. "The only ones that can stop him."

She smiled at me, and that smile held fatigue and sadness and resignation and just a little bit of hope. I wanted to tell her _no_, but no words would come out. I wasn't fast enough then, either, and before I knew it she was gone and I was left in the room with only a red wooden box in my hands and the feel of her lips on my scalp. Alone, again. I sat there for a moment, too confused to move, collecting my thoughts.

I knew what I'd seen, of course, in those images. I'd seen Walter, or his mental image of himself, newly born and lying on the floor of Room 302 as his parents walked out of his life forever. There was no other possibility. What was going on in his head, though, to make him look so malformed? Did he really see himself that way? As some sort of half-human monster?

I couldn't figure that out now. I…I had to get back, to find Eileen, to stop her. She might be able to make her way back to my room, if by some miracle nothing got her first, but when she went inside the hauntings would eat her alive…

Then, I saw the nightstick, lying alone and forgotten where I'd thrown it. She'd gone back unarmed. She didn't stand a chance.

That cleared my head as quickly as anything could have. I shoved the box into my pocket, grabbed the nightstick and ran for the door.

* * *

As soon as the door of 105 closed behind me, I knew that something had happened. What, I didn't know. It's like when you step outside on a day near the end of summer and realize suddenly that the air is less heavy and humid, the breeze is cooler, and that you'd better remember to bring a jacket next time, because fall is on the way. It's more than just a change in the weather. You feel the shift.

Everything looked the same, but a bell was tolling, and the place smelled…expectant. I knew as well as you do now what that bell meant. There was nothing to do but to try to get back to my room as quickly as possible.

On the floor outside Frank's room, there was a piece of paper. It looked as though it might have been torn from that sketchbook. On it, drawn in the same childish style, was another stick figure, sprawled across the whole paper, but with weird concentric circles drawn around its middle. Splotches of red erupted from the circles like blood.

…_like blood…is this…_

The figure's spiky hair was dark and long, almost shoulder-length.

…_is this Eileen?_

No time to waste. Back through the maze of rooms to my place. There were double-headed babies and buttheads on the way, but I shoved past them and ran for it as fast as I could.

The signs in 201 had changed.

_It has…begun…  
It's finally begun.  
The time has finally come!  
It's here!!!  
It has commenced!  
It has begun…  
The Show is about to begin!_

Even Little Walter pounding at my door disappeared as I approached and hurried inside.

"Eileen!" I called. No response. She wasn't there. I looked everywhere, even called through the hole into the back, but she was nowhere to be found.

That goddamn murdering bastard...

Walter had taken Eileen!


	35. The back room and the red room

I leaned against the door, catching my breath and surveying my room once again. Nothing seemed to have changed since I'd burst through the door earlier. Same old same old…the TV seemed to have turned itself off, though. Apart from that I still had Old Baldy making himself comfortable above the couch, my slippers were waiting for Godot, and the sink was still piping O-negative down the drain. The babies wailed their plaintive song above the chest just like before.

None of that mattered, though. Walter had Eileen. I knew it. Where else could she have gone? What had he done with her…what was _he doing with her?_

I didn't have a lot of time. No, I had no idea how time ran in this world, but I couldn't assume that things would just pick up where they'd left off when I got back to…

Where? There was nowhere else to go! We'd looked everywhere, and we hadn't found the damn spears or anything but Walter's rotting umbilical cord. I had none of the other things that the Crimson Tome had told me I needed. Nothing. I was completely at a loss.

_Wait! There's one thing I __**can**__ do._

I emptied my pockets into the chest as usual. The umbilical cord had stopped smelling bad, and when I opened the box to make sure that I hadn't dropped its contents along the way, I found that the thing had somehow plumped back up and looked fresh and new. _It_ knew what I had to do, and so did I…

…except that when I pulled myself through the hole at the end of the hallway, there was nothing there. No, that's wrong. The fridge was still there, and so were the metal shelves and the tables with their weird objects, and the cross was still resting in the puddle of black goo…but that's all there was. The Conjurer's flesh had apparently decided to take a walk. I stared at the empty cross for a while before it sank in. Walter's rotten corpse had disappeared. Somehow.

_Like that_.

All that was left was the cross, with five bloody spikes in the middle. The blood was still fresh (even though it was ten years old), and glistening wetly. I was left holding the piece of tissue with nowhere to put it.

_What now?_

At least nothing in here stank any more, unless you counted my sweaty, dirty, tired butt. The stench had dissipated while I'd been out. But something else had changed, too. My eyes were drawn to the circular pool of black goo below the cross. It was completely opaque; I had no idea how deep it was. It could have been bottomless for all I knew. It looked the same as before…but now that I looked at it, it seemed to be calling me in, to enter its depths and…

…_and what? What would be down there?_

I knew, of course, as soon as I asked. And I smiled to myself, I think, because I welcomed it. It was so clear and so simple. The next step I'd been looking for was right in front of me. There would be no more subways or buildings or forests or anything that I'd seen before. Just this. I would lower myself into that pool of blackness, let it envelop me…and then beyond that would be whatever Walter had in store for me. I wouldn't worry about drowning. Why should I? After all, he was going to break my neck, not drown me. Then whatever was going to happen would happen, and one way or another, it would be _over._ The end.

It hit me then. Not like a ton of bricks...more like a lifting up, a lessening of the weight on my shoulders. This was it, then. This was it. The end of the road that I'd been waiting for for so long. The finality of it all was so liberating. I was…happy. Really happy…

Where Walter went, I was supposed to follow. That part of the overall design was clear. Still, I'd better be prepared. Time for one final trip to my storage chest. I pocketed the two little brown pointed vials, a few first-aid kits, and the red box. If my suspicions were right, I'd want to have a little pocket space left when I headed down. No guns…those ran out of bullets too quickly, and if I wasn't coming back then they'd be dead weight soon enough. No, nothing but my trusty axe would see me through that twilight. It hadn't let me down yet, and we'd been through too much together for me to leave it behind.

I grabbed a couple of bottles of brown sludge and bolted them down, then sat back down in the chair by the window to stare into the Ashfield summer night. I had no idea what time it was…probably the wee hours by now, I'd think. Morning would be coming soon, but not for me, of course…for all of those people out there fast asleep in their beds. They would see the sun rise once more, even if I never would again. If I could just make it through one more time, could just get this one last thing done somehow, they'd never have to know what happened here.

When I was in high school, tooling around with my camera, I had the standard teenage dreams of being talented and famous and rich someday. I would take a picture of a hill and imagine myself the next Ansel Adams or Galen Rowell. I knew that it wouldn't really happen, of course, just as I knew that Buffalo wings didn't really come from buffalo, but it didn't matter. It was fun back then to dream of being famous and having exhibitions of my work in fancy galleries and waves of people coming up to tell me how great I was. Fame and fortune…the simple things, right?

Now, I was older, and a much different person from that skinny kid (hell, a much different person from the Henry that had woken up with a headache and no ibuprofen five days ago). I took a moment, just a little one, to lose myself in the soft, warm summer night, and I dreamed a different dream. I dreamed that I would do a strange thing, something no one had ever done before, but this time I would be so damn good at it that nobody would ever know what I'd done. People's lives would continue on as usual, but because of me, not in spite of me. I dreamed of anonymity, even as I longed for that something bigger that now would never come. It was a blanket that I wrapped around myself and let myself float in, for just a little while. My purpose was more clear than ever before. All of life's complexities and ambiguities and difficult decisions had fallen away, and I knew what I had to do. It was all so simple now. I was finally at peace after twenty-eight years, and it was the most amazing thing I've ever felt.

I couldn't hear the bell tolling any more, but that didn't mean that time wasn't passing. I had to go. I treated myself to one more look out over South Ashfield, and then I got to my feet and turned away from the world forever. It felt good.

* * *

I checked myself to make sure that I had everything I needed (and nothing I didn't), and lowered myself to the floor in front of the open refrigerator, cross-legged. The blackness was seductive. I poked a finger into the hole, and drew out a string of the black goop. It was like mucus, or…well, I don't know. Slimy and shiny, but just a little sticky, too. Like nothing I'd ever seen. But then again, this whole day – this whole _week_ – had been like nothing I'd ever seen.

I was ready. I could feel it. Still, I couldn't help wanting to stare at my strange, dusty surroundings one last time. I didn't know what lay on the other side, but I did know this, even just a little. This was my apartment, but as I'd never seen it. Everything was just as it had been a few minutes before, except now I was seeing it with different eyes.

_Eyes…and flesh. _

Would I die when I passed through the blackness? Was that the reason it was there? To kill me? Was Eileen already dead, and Walter just waiting impatiently somewhere for me to get it over with? That was possible. I could have not gone through, stayed hidden in my apartment, but sooner or later the things coming in through the walls would have gotten me anyway. Just like they'd gotten Joseph. Neither of us could have held them off forever. That way was certain death; this way, less certain.

My hands seemed strangely pink and large. I'd seen plenty of dead hands today, and mine were definitely not dead. But would they be in ten seconds? Two days? Three years? Fifty? How long would it take? What would they look like after they died? I hadn't seen phantom-Henry's hands when he came to my door, so I didn't know. I turned them over and over, trying to imagine them green and rotting.

Even the most familiar, everyday, welcoming things look very different when your future is counted in seconds, not decades.

Suddenly, I was terrified, more terrified than I'd ever been. This was it. This was really it. I was leaving everything behind, every part of the life I'd known, and I was probably never going to see any of this again. I'd never wake to another dull morning, never eat another plate of pasta at Fuseli's, never again fall asleep in front of the late late movie on Saturday night TV. I'd never do or feel those things that I'd taken for granted every day of my life. Oh my God…I wasn't ready for this, I'd never be ready for this, how could_ anybody_ ever really be prepared for…

I dug my nails into my palms to calm myself.

_Enough of that. Get on with it, Henry. Eileen's waiting. And so is Walter._

It was time. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, leaned forward, and toppled headfirst into the hole.

* * *

_Suspended…_

Warm and comfortable, curled in on myself. In midair, with no walls or floor in my way…just the warm happiness. My panic was gone. I felt loved and protected. I could stay here forever…

_Am I…_

Red light was filtering through my closed eyelids. At first, it was just a gentle illumination, then it got brighter and annoying. I blinked once, then again. Then, I was conscious, and I lifted my head to look around.

I was in a round room. The walls and ceiling were a hazy red, and it took me several seconds to realize that it wasn't my eyes that couldn't focus…it was that everything else was hazy. I was floating. My knees were under my chin, and my arms were crossed over them, hands on either side of my face. Carefully, I uncurled myself. One foot down, then the other, and I was standing on solid ground. I looked down at the floor below me, and then at my hands. They weren't green and rotting…they were still the same thick pinkness that they'd been before, but more so in the red light. So, I was still alive. It felt strange.

All around me were figures in the wall. They were life-size and dressed in red, and seemed to be crucified against panels of bright white light mounted at irregular intervals on the cylindrical wall. I couldn't count them, because every time I tried, I'd lose track of where I'd started. Ten, maybe? I don't know. In the middle of the floor several inches away was a round hole, eight or nine feet wide. I couldn't see the bottom. Who was to say whether there _was_ a bottom, anyway?

Now, looking back on it, I understand what that room symbolized, what it meant to Walter and to me, and why I had to pass through it. Hindsight is 20/20 (ugh…I hate clichés), like they say. But, I wasn't thinking too clearly just then. I was still drowsy from whatever unconscious state I'd been put into before I woke up there, and my attempts to find another exit were fruitless, just as they were supposed to be.

There was nothing left to do but jump down the hole.

So I did.


	36. Kashmir 1

No more holes, now. I came to on a hard surface. It was cold and rough, and was vibrating slightly, as if connected to something mechanical. Then I heard the whirring and grinding of that large machine, and I realized that I was lying there defenseless. I quickly got my bearings and hauled myself to my feet.

I was standing in another round room. This one was much larger, and hemispherical, with an enormous brown striped dome running almost all the way down to red walls. Mounted on those walls were figures identical to the ones I'd seen before, and as I stood there I counted eight of them. Each had something sticking out of its chest, but in the low light I couldn't make out what it was. There was also an enormous shape, a head and shoulders, hung low from the ceiling with hooks and ropes, and wrapped in some kind of stringy white membrane. As I watched, it stretched forward and roared at nothing in particular, and I could see its long white hair and its green-yellow eyes and then I realized just what this was.

The middle of the room was taken up by a huge pool of blood. It sloshed against the edges of its round pool, stirred up by a complex series of connected metal rings that spun and twirled around each other gyroscopically. The rings had teeth on their outer edges that looked as though they could grind anything – or anyone – to a pulp in seconds. In the middle was a round metal ball. _Of course._ I recognized the machine from the drawing on the floor outside of Frank's apartment. It looked just like the ringed thing in the picture of Eileen.

It took me about ten or fifteen seconds to take this all in, and then something else demanded my attention. There was a familiar tall blond figure standing not thirty feet in front of me. I reached for my axe, but he just smiled at me, and I saw that his hands were empty. That confused me for a moment. It looked almost as if…

…_as if he's here to talk? Well, then, let's talk._

I walked forward, but not too close, and stared him in the eye. He seemed tall from a distance, but he only had an inch or so on me (I'm a little over six feet tall, so he was about six-two or six-three, maybe). He was standing rigid, as if at attention, with that goddamn unearthly smile on his face. It was almost as if he was happy…on cloud nine…

_Of course he is. This is it. Now he finally gets to complete his ritual, welcome the last two Sacraments into the fold. It's just Eileen and me between him and his Mother. His Paradise is so close, he can probably taste it. _

There seemed to be no immediate threat, so I decided that I'd let him know just how I felt about all of this. But the strange thing was, now that this was finally _happening_, I couldn't think of a single thing to say to him. What could I say? He knew what had been going on better than I did. After all, he designed this nightmare. He knew what he wanted. And the only thing he _didn't_ know was what I really felt about it all, and I knew damn well that he didn't care. So…

I stood there running through all of the possibilities, and came up empty. Just like usual. Like I said, I changed a lot that day…but when push comes to shove, I'm still inarticulate as hell.

I saw something move out of the corner of my eye. I'd been so focused on Walter that I hadn't noticed that he was standing next to a tall wooden platform. It reminded me of a scaffold, but it had no rope, just stairs down into the pool of blood. When I looked up, I realized that the movement had come from Eileen. She was standing there alone, leaning slightly on her good leg, still bruised and bloody, but no worse than when I'd seen her last (_thank God_). I tried to catch her eye, but she just stared straight ahead, as if blind or…

…_possessed. Cursed. Just like she said. That's what Walter did to her. He's been doing it all day. She's under his spell now. Completely._

_God damn it._

Walter was still just smiling at me. Enjoying his victory? Looking forward to meeting his Mother? Who knows. I wasn't trying to read his mind just then. Every fiber of my being wanted to run at him and plant that axe in his skull, and the only reason I didn't was that I remembered what usually happened when I tried. It wouldn't do a damn bit of good. Nothing would.

A child's voice echoed through the arena.

"Mom…Mom…let me in!"

_Little Walter! Still looking for his Mom…_

"Mom!"

I watched as big Walter lifted his hands and spread his arms wide over his head. He smiled up at the ceiling. "Hey there, little Walter," he said in a loud, ringing voice.  
"Just a little longer now…"

_It's certain now. This is it. What I've been hoping for – and fearing – all day. This is really it._

_What a relief…_

Walter was talking to me.

"Henry…you're it. The last of the 21 Sacraments. The Final Sign."

Eileen lurched forward, and took an unsteady step toward the pool of blood. Off to my side, out of my line of vision, I could hear the grinding gears going around and around…and I remembered the rest of that picture.

"The Receiver of Wisdom."

I lifted my head and stood tall, and looked him straight in the eye. Yes, I had done what he wanted me to, to this point. I'd learned all that he had to teach, and seen what he had to show me. That was behind me now. In front of me…

In front of me was my future and Eileen's, or what remained of it. I found my voice.

"No."

His head tilted, and he looked at me with an amused expression. "No?"

"No." I wasn't in the mood to give him _anything_ at that moment.

"No…what?"

"I'm not your Receiver of Wisdom, Walter."

I heard myself speaking from a great distance, and I wondered at the calmness in my voice. He raised his arm and gestured toward Eileen, and she froze, mid-step.

"But of course you are, Henry," he said, laughing. He raised his hands to me. For a moment I was reminded of…

…_This is my dream, and you don't even know my name?..._

"You have always been. Ever since that day at the beach. Remember?"

_Day at the beach? What's he talking ab…wait. _

_Wait a minute._

…_a day at the beach…_

"The first time I showed you the Halo. You've been crawling through it all day."

There was that something poking at my brain again, the same tug I'd felt the first time I stood at the door in the cemetery in the forest, staring at the round symbol on it. It was just a faint pull then, an unformed feeling of familiarity, but it was more insistent now.

…_a circle…_

Walter's eyebrow went up quizzically.

"Don't tell me that you don't remember."

…_round and red…_

An image flashed before me. A red circle, with another inside…

…_with three circles in the center, and runes around the outside and more symbols in the middle._

Complete and perfect.

_Oh my God._

My stomach liquefied and ran down into my knees.

…_a day at the beach._

_Yes, I remember it now. It was a long time ago, and I was a little kid at the beach in Silent Hill with my mother, drawing animals in the sand. But that was more than twenty years ago…_

Finally, my brain made the connection it should have made back in the bathroom in the subway so many hours ago, the first time I saw a Hole ringed in red. The Halo…the round red symbol around the Holes…and on the doors that we'd passed through on the spiral.

The Halo. Of course I knew it. I'd known it almost as long as I'd been alive.

_I'd started drawing circles in the sand. I don't remember why…just a whim, a way to pass the time, I guess, like little kids do while waiting to grow up. Then an older boy, just in his teens, walked up to me. He was tall and skinny, with long dirty-blond hair and threadbare clothes that were too short for him. But I'd never forgotten his eyes. They were greenish-yellow, and looked through me as if they knew my soul. He knelt in the sand in front of me and started drawing, too, more circles inside my circles. Then, I…_

Then, I'd known what to do. That was when I'd helped him finish the drawing. We'd drawn the Halo together, fingers moving side by side in the sand. When it was done, he'd smiled at me and stood up and left, and I'd stared at the thing for a while before it started to freak me out for no reason and I erased it from the sand.

And now, those same greenish-yellow eyes were looking straight through me just as they'd done that day.

_The Halo. So that's what it is called._

It had surrounded me every time I got into a Hole to move between the worlds. It had been all around me, all through everything that had happened today. How had I not seen it before?

I felt my bones turn to water too, and I broke out in a cold sweat. I was beyond freaked-out. Way, way beyond. It's still hard to talk about right now. Because it hit me then, just how far this really extended. I'd thought that it was just about these past few days, days and nights, nights filled with dreams of killing people and ruling the world, and things that he'd been showing me so that I could take my place in his plan and submit willingly to death.

No. It was more than that, so much more. He'd met Eileen when she was a little girl, too, he'd told me so. That was when she'd given him the doll. He must have picked her out that day, when she was just a little child…just as he'd done with me, a few years before, on that sunny beach in Silent Hill. Of course he had. I just hadn't put two and two together until now.

It wasn't that I'd just become his Receiver of Wisdom. I'd _always been_. The Halo had made me so.

_Then…that means…no…oh God, __**no**__…_

That was why…that was why I'd loved photography, all these years. Because I was to be his eyes and ears, to learn everything that he had to show me. I was designed to be an observer, to see and hear and take in everything. To him, I was a repository of information. That was my function in this complex mechanism he'd created, and somehow he'd tuned me and shaped me to fit my intended function. Just like a gear in a machine. That was why I'd always had trouble making friends, why I'd never really become attached to anyone, why I preferred to be by myself with my camera and my TV…I'd been waiting all of this time. Watching and waiting, waiting until he needed me. No wonder I'd felt so at home in Room 302 when I first saw it. It was where I was supposed to be. I'd inherited it from Joseph, just as intended. He'd kept me happily isolated in there for two years, on ice until it was time for the final phase of his plan.

Looking back on it, I can see now how ridiculous and paranoid that sounds. But what he'd reminded me of shook me to the core, and I haven't gotten past it. Not yet. Maybe not ever. Of all of the unanswered questions, that's the worst by far. Am I…is what I am because of him? Is everything about me, everything I love and hate and fear and hold precious, because of _him_? Am I the same person that I would have been without his influence, whatever shape it may have taken? Or am I only what he made me? Who am I, really? What would I have been like if not for…what would have happened differently…

I can't believe that I'm telling you all of this.

He must have seen me falter, because he smiled kindly. "So, you see. You _are_ the Receiver." He nodded in satisfaction. "And I couldn't have made a better choice."

…_perhaps not. But choice is…_

I made my decision then and there. Not that it was a hard one to make, but that was the moment that it felt real. There was _no way_ that I was going to give in to any of this. No way. Until the moment I died, I had the ability to determine my own fate, even if my options were narrowing by the second. And determine it I would.

"It wasn't your choice to make," I heard myself saying. "For me, or for any of them. You didn't give any of them a choice. You just took what you wanted and left them to wander your hell forever."

He lifted his eyes to the center of the ceiling. There was a large round hole up there. I could see a bright glow coming down through the hole, white tinged with pink.

"All for Mother," he said, stretching his arms up again toward the hole. "It was all for Mother. She will bring us Paradise, Henry. You know that."

What I knew was that I had nothing to lose.

"The Mother you're trying to bring back is nothing but a demon, Walter. You know _that_. I read the same things you read. What kind of god would ask for twenty-one deaths to come back?"

He was still staring up at the hole, enraptured, as if he hadn't heard a word I'd said. Time to hit him with the big guns.

"Your mother and father are long gone. You can't even remember their faces. They're never coming back, Walter. _You're_ never coming back. You should have died that day." It was cruel, but I didn't have a choice.

"_You'd_ know all about that, wouldn't you?"

Those eyes fixed mine again, and his voice chilled my blood. He hadn't even flinched. But I had, and I know that he saw it.

"I know, Henry. About your father, about your mother, about all of that. All about your _happy_ childhood. Everything."

_Well, of course you do. _I'd suspected as much since going through the prison with Eileen, and now here he was confirming it for me.

But the implications of things were still sinking in.

"Because it was your fault," I said slowly. "_You_ did that, too. You made me so unlike him that you guaranteed that everything would fall apart, that I'd have nobody when…_You_ destroyed my family."

_Not me. You._ All of these years, I'd thought…I'd assumed it was _my_ fault…everything that had gone wrong back in high school and before. I'd assumed that _I'd_ driven Dad away, that _I'd_ made Mom cry, that _I'd_ let them down, when really it had been –

"No, Henry. I can't take credit for that." He stopped there, and shook his head. "That wasn't me. If you hadn't been such a disappointment to him – "

"That was you too!" I'd lost control of myself. Completely. "You _can_ take credit for it. You _should_. It's all...it's all your fault. If you hadn't done what you did to me, to us, none of it would have happened!"

I couldn't be sure of that, of course, but I didn't care. I felt myself slipping, slipping into being that little five-year-old again...just like little Walter.

"You did all of that...you ruined everything."

"I did what I had to do."

"Even if it meant wrecking three people's lives. Plus at least twenty more."

"Yes."

"People who had never done a damn thing to you. Most of them didn't even know you. But you used them and threw them away like trash."

"Yes."

"How could you _do_ that? After what happened to you…you of all people…how could you make other people go through that?"

But I knew the answer already. Misery loves company. And he made sure that he had plenty of company.

He said…nothing.

I gritted my teeth. "You…everything you did…you made my mother _cry_, goddamn it."

Where did _that _come from? _I'd had to write that off a long time ago. That shouldn't have mattered after all this time._ But I guess it did.

He shrugged.

"I don't know why you're whining. I'd have given everything to have what you had, broken or not."

"Looks like you did," I said under my breath.

"You were lucky to have all that, even if you don't realize it. But none of that matters now."

"It matters to _me!_"_God DAMN it, Walter, you can't stop there! I need to know!_

"No, Henry." He spoke patiently, as if explaining things to a little kid. "What matters now is _now_. We are here…the last three. I've done my part already. All that remains is for you and Miss Galvin to do yours."

"And that would be?"

He laughed and spread his hands again. "You know what you have to do, Henry."

Yeah, I guess I should have known that he'd say that. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I knew that he wouldn't try anything until I was good and ready for it.

"Answer one last question," I said.

"Go ahead."

_Well, at least he plays fair. Sort of._

"…what _did_ you do to me for all of these years? What did you do to make me…what I am? You owe it to me to tell me."

He smiled and shook his head at me. Again.

"You're just trying to slow things down. I've been patient long enough. It's been fascinating, it really has. Thank you."

…_son of a BITCH! _

I knew then that it was no use. He was never going to tell me, never. But, it wasn't as if he was deliberately torturing me, though. I got the feeling that he really didn't see why it mattered to anybody what he'd done to my life for the past twenty-plus years. Least of all me. I was just a tool to him, and how could a trivial thing like that possibly be important?

I was so angry at that moment that I nearly forgot what I had to do. Then, I remembered. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the red box. He looked at me, baffled. I gripped it tightly as if my life depended on it (which it did) and lifted the lid to show him the contents. Walter turned white. Then, as I watched, he turned gray and black, like a photograph. He smiled at me again, and I knew that the time for waiting was over.


	37. Kashmir 2

I closed the box tightly and took off toward the huge body hanging across the arena from me. Walter laughed, and suddenly appeared in front of me. He was a specter of gray and black, swinging a metal pipe at me as I approached the body. I dodged his swings and ran several feet toward the pool of blood.

_Bury part of the Conjurer's mother's flesh within the true body of the Conjurer._

As the thing lowered its head toward me and roared, I turned around, pulled my arm back as far as I could and flung the box toward its head. My aim was true, and the box disappeared into the body's open mouth. It howled and screamed, and out of the corner of my eye I saw the dark figure falter and tumble to the ground. One down, one to go. With him down, I had a little time to think…

Eileen took a step forward, closer to the grinding gears.

_Or maybe I don't._

There was a cracking sound that echoed around the arena. At first it seemed as though nothing had happened. But then, something glinted, and I saw the spear in the figure on my left sag just slightly. It wasn't much, but it was enough to remind me that there was still work to be done…a lot of it. I ran up the few steps to the figure, planted my foot against it, grabbed the handle of the spear and pulled for all that I was worth.

_Pop_

Such a small sound for such a huge event. The spear in my hands was warm, not like wood or plastic, but almost like a living thing. I grasped it tightly and peered at the handle. One word was written there.

_Despair_

_This one's for you, Joseph. Thank you._

There were three more on that side of the body, and I hurried to pull them out before Walter decided to stop laughing at me and start smacking me or shooting me. By the time I got to the one next to the wooden platform, Eileen was another step closer to the blades, and I realized that I had to move faster than I'd ever moved before, before she…

"Eileen!"

She didn't respond. I planted and pulled, and added the spear to my collection. Hands full. Time to go back.

"Eileen! Hang in there!"

She probably couldn't respond, probably couldn't even hear me. I ran like hell, past Walter (whose aim with that gun was good…he got me right through the arm), skidded to a stop in front of the monstrosity, gritted my teeth, and lifted the spear in my hands.

It was heavy…so heavy…and the bullet hole in my arm _hurt_.

The thing's neck stretched over me, thin and pulsating. I planted my back foot and slung that spear upwards for all that I was worth…and, miracle of miracles, the tines penetrated the flesh just where I'd been aiming. Guess those long, hot days in the dusty infield twenty years ago were finally paying off. The spear stuck fast, and the thing roared in pain.

_Despair will do that to you._

The rest followed in quick succession. _Darkness_. _Void_. _Gloom_. As I turned to grab the other four, I saw Walter lifting himself to his feet again. Whatever the hell was happening, whatever it was that the spears were doing, it was hurting him…really hurting him. I'd never managed that before. This had to be good, right?

Eileen was a few feet from the top of the steps…I had to hurry. Soon, I'd filled my hands again. Then, I was back in front of the thing. Blood was running down my arm to my hand now, and I had to grip each spear more tightly. Lift and sling...

_Temptation. _I thought of Cynthia, smiling at me in the darkness of the subway eons ago, with those small white teeth and those amber eyes and the golden flesh that I dared not look at until it was covered with her own blood as she lay dying. I could still hear her laugh as it echoed down the empty corridors. I still can now.

_Source._ Jasper, poor harmless stuttering Jasper. He'd probably never even hurt a fly in his life. But still, he ended up burning to death in the abandoned back room of Wish House. How did a guy like him get mixed up in all of this, anyway?

_Watchfulness._ Andrew, grabbing at my sleeve after I woke up in the prison…and then pleading for his life at the feet of a little boy. He was probably one of the ones who had made the kids' lives hell, and he merited no sympathy on that count. But still, in the end, nobody deserved to die like he had.

_Chaos_. Richard was…Richard. Asshole or not, he died horribly, too. They all had.

A roar rang out, nearly splitting the arena in two. I looked up at the body hanging over me, but nothing seemed to have changed. It still hung there, wrapped in its white caul, with my spears hanging out of it.

_Thou must also pierce the Conjurer's flesh with the 8 spears…  
Do so and the Conjurer's unholy flesh will become that which once it was, by the grace of our Lord._

But nothing had changed…

_Wait._

Walter – he was several feet away from me, writhing face-down on the ground. His yellow hair was spread on the ground around his head like silk.

_Yellow hair. Blue coat. No longer gray and black. Unholy flesh…not his real flesh, hanging above me, but his __**unholy**__ flesh. It is as it once was, now. Not dead, but…mortal. Mortal!_

_Come on, Walter. Let's have some fun._

I lifted the axe from my belt. That hurt, given the bullet hole through my arm, but now wasn't the time to try to learn to be ambidextrous. I wiped the blood on my hands onto my jeans and gripped the axe firmly. He took a long time to pull himself up, and Eileen took another step toward the ooze as I watched and waited. But then, he finally got to his feet, and as he laughed and raised his gun I took my usual step forward and lodged the axe blade right between his eyes. He groaned, and staggered back as blood spurted from his smashed nose. God, that felt good…

…for about half a second, until he straightened up and smiled again. Something moved quickly below my range of vision, and I was smacked several feet through the air and onto the ground, _hard_. I pushed myself up to see him waving that damn pipe at me.

_Evasion. What a wonderful concept. Don't get too cocky, dumbass._

And so it began.

* * *

Some trial and error taught me two things. First, that this bastard wasn't going down quickly. An ordinary person would have been down after a couple of axe blades through the skull, but I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that Walter hadn't become that ordinary after all. Second, that getting the hell out of his way after hitting him was definitely a good idea. I couldn't get too far away, or he'd start shooting, but if I stayed too close his metal pipe would smash my shins. So, I ended up doing this complex little movement around him. After a while, it became almost rhythmic, like a dance. 

_SLAM! – whack – jump back – up axe – circle, circle, circle – SLAM! – whack – jump back – up axe – circle, circle, circle…_

Still, nothing's ever perfect, right? I'd get shot or hit every few iterations, and I ran through those first aid kits pretty quickly. After a while, I was left with Eileen partway down the stairs, a hole all the way through my arm, and Walter still standing there smiling at me.

_This is never going to end…never…_

I was covered in blood, mine and his, and I was running out of steam. That wasn't a luxury I had just then…of all times. The blood was soaking through my clothes and chilling my skin. My pockets were almost empty, but for those two little pointed brown bottles. What had Eileen said about them?

_WHACK!_

Flat on my back again, Walter standing over me, gun pointed at my head. I scrambled back and rolled out of the way of his shot, nearly slipping on the blood that coated my hand again. A quick axe to the shins knocked him back and bought me a few seconds more. She'd said that they were good, and that I should hang on to them for emergencies or something, right?

_This. Is. An. Emergency._

I broke the top off of one. It looked like you were supposed to use a hypodermic needle to shoot the stuff into your veins, but of course I had no such thing on me. Great. How the hell…then, I remembered the holes in my arm. They were still open and bleeding. Good enough. I shoved the jagged tip of the bottle into the hole in the front (yes, that hurt like HELL), dug it into the torn muscle so that its contents wouldn't just dribble out of the other hole, and turned it upside down. The liquid flowed into my raw flesh, stinging and burning as it ran down into me. I wrapped my other hand around the arm to seal the holes around the bottle as best I could.

Nothing happened for a second or two. Then, a light burned before my eyes, like a wall of fire. I was blinded for a moment…

…and Jesus, I was pain-free. Completely. Even the headache was gone. For the first time in nearly a week, I was one hundred percent fine...awake and well-rested, even. My wounds were gone, too. The hole in the front of my arm was still there, since the tip of the bottle had kept it from healing shut, but it didn't hurt any more. I was a new man. In every way.

I didn't realize just how new until I lifted my head and looked up. Walter had gotten to his feet and was standing several feet away from me, breathing hard and leaning on his pipe. Blood was flowing from countless wounds on every part of his body. But as I watched, he seemed to transform before my eyes. Or perhaps he already had. He looked exactly the same, of course. But where before there had been an inhuman, relentless monster, the invulnerable creator of this nightmare, now I saw a man.

A man. _As he once was. _An ordinary man. Just like any other.

But he wasn't the one who had changed. My eyes saw him anew, for they _were_ new. Colors were brighter, shadows were darker, and I could see the tiniest details of the fabric of his coat and the unruly strands of hair around his face and the specks of blood on his pants. These were no longer the eyes of a dead-tired, zoned-out, discombobulated little photographer who had seen far too much in far too short a time. They were the eyes of a…

_A super-human. _

For I was twenty feet tall now. No, fifty. A hundred. Or at least I felt like it. I was unstoppable. Now _I _was the hunter, and he the hunted. Now he was the sorry bastard on the brink of death, and _I_ was the all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful master of everything I saw. I knew it in my bones. I was…

_A machine. A __**god**__. I AM A GOD!_

_And he's just a man._

I'd gone through too much, suffered far too much, seen too many people die to be able to forgive and forget. Never. I'd never forget, and this Henry could never forgive. Not any longer. Then, I suddenly remembered the nightmares I'd had for the past several days…not what I'd dreamt, but the feelings I'd had. They were like this…feelings of power, of domination, of being the ruler of my universe. _He_ had put those feelings there, those intoxicating thrills, to try to win me over to his side, to make me understand what could have been if I'd just given in. They'd been too much, and I'd fought them then. Well, I gave into them now. I'd finally been pushed past my limit, and there was no going back. Too bad for him.

_Backfired on you, huh, you laughable little WORM!_

Cold and sweet, it was. Best served cold and sweet. And here he was, on a silver platter, mine for the taking. All mine. And he was just a man.

…a_ man __**in my way.**_

"What?"

It came out as a whisper. The last time I'd heard him whisper, he'd blown a hole in my side at point-blank range. This time would be different.

I must have spoken, I realized. Guess he hadn't heard me clearly.

"You're just a man, Walter," I replied. My voice was solid and strong.

He looked confused, and I smiled.

"Just a man."

Horror dawned on his face as he realized what was happening. He raised his revolver and shot at the hand that held the axe. It blew apart in a spray of blood, but I felt no pain, and as we both watched the bullet fell out and clattered to the ground as the torn flesh and bone healed in a second. Walter's mouth dropped open, and he watched mutely as I laid the axe on the ground and flexed my fingers. They were as good as new…not a scratch on them.

Then, I reached down and lifted my axe in that hand (_it was light as a feather)_ and strode toward Walter. Time to end this. _On MY terms._

_Look at him writhe now. Look at him back away from me as if in fear. KNOW it, Walter. Fear. The fear that you inflicted on so many other people…and the pain of staring your own death in the face. And this time, not wanting to die._

He was backing away from me slowly, cautiously, and his eyes were glued to my face as I advanced upon him. His hand gripped his gun tightly. But it was no use. He knew it too. There was no escape this time…for either of us.

_Now you know what it was like for them, for her, for me. Now you know what your insanity, your uncontrolled rage has cost them, and what it will finally cost you. Now you know that you won't win, you can't win, and that all of your work was for nothing. She will never come back now, never be yours again. Now you have failed him, failed her, failed yourself. You have nothing left that you can do except to go join the rest of them. KNOW IT!_

There was a strange taste in my mouth…like blood, but richer and tangier. And at last, I found words for what I had to say to him.

"I'm..." WHACK! Jump.

"Getting..." WHACK! _BANG!_ came the shot. It missed my leg by a mile…not that it would have done a damn thing to me anyway. I smiled at him. This was_ fun_.

"Damn…" WHACK! He faltered, but was back up in no time.

"Tired..." WHACK! Walter swung his pipe, and I easily stepped out of the way.

"Of..." WHACK! He staggered, a little longer this time.

"Your..." WHACK! Was that confusion on his face? It sure tasted like it. He raised an arm against the next blow.

"SHIT!"

WHACK! The axe sank deep into his side below the ribs. I pulled it out a moment later, and his blood sprayed me in sheets.

The arm dropped, and he just stood there as the spray slowed to a steady flow. The smile was gone, and in its place was a look of such sadness that it stopped me in my tracks. Then, he toppled backwards with a _WHUMP_ that echoed throughout the arena. He lay still for several seconds, long enough for me to start moving toward him to check.

Just then, he stirred…then he began to pull himself up. First he placed one hand on the ground, then the other, agonizingly slowly. It seemed to take forever, but finally he was up on his knees a few feet in front of me, breathing heavily as the blood flowed down and began to pool around his legs. His head drooped to the side, just a little, and then his eyes turned upwards toward me and he smiled again. A real smile, this time, free of delusions or malice or pain...open and innocent, just like little Walter's smile had been. It was a smile of pure joy. Whatever had tormented him for all of these years had finally released its grip on him. He was looking through me again, and I didn't know why…

Then I realized it. He was dying, and he knew it. I could taste that, too.

I began to raise the axe one last time. I wanted to see the look on his face as his cat's-eyes parted company and his lips went in two opposite directions and his teeth shot free of his shattered skull in thick sheets of brains and blood. I wanted to cleave him from head to toe, split him in twain, and then cut him into pieces again and again until all that was left were bloody blond hairs and shreds of blue fabric and powers-of-two numbers of tiny bits of Walter all over the floor like ground meat.

I smiled at him and took a deep breath, and as I swung upward a few drops of blood flew off of the blade onto his face. They made tiny splashing sounds as they landed on his skin. One hit him in the eye, and it closed automatically. The other green-yellow eye followed the arc of the blade as it stopped behind my shoulder…

…and a voice echoed in my head.

…_beef stew…_

I knew that voice as well as I knew my own now. I'd never forget its low rumbling tones.

…_nothing more than an inhuman killing machine._

The axe stayed where it was.

His eyes met mine for the last time. They refocused, and I realized that this was the first time that he hadn't seemed to be looking straight through me since he'd fallen. "Thank you," he whispered. He sounded just like the babies on the wall in my room. Then, he slumped backwards to the ground, and there was nothing but the sound of the gears grinding and the roar of my blood thumping through my ears.

I stepped forward and stood over him. This was _the_ moment that I'd been dreaming of for hours and hours. Somehow, I'd imagined that if I ever got to do this, I'd want to put my foot through his chest, or stand there and smash his face in, or shout bloody murder at him until he died from sheer auditory overload, or do _something_ cathartic. Now, I wanted nothing more than to watch him die.

His blood ran out over the floor, and I drank in its warm, coppery smell through my nose and mouth. His eyes opened, and so did his lips. A ragged sound came out.

"Mom…"

A hand waved in the air, reaching for whoever it was that his unfocused eyes saw. They say that when Queen Mary I of England lay on her deathbed in 1558, she saw little children dancing, the children that she wanted so desperately and that fate had denied her.

But…but he was looking at _me._

"Mom!"

_She's gone, Walter._

The hand sagged, and dropped, and his head lolled sideways. He exhaled one last time, and then he was still.

It took a few seconds for it to sink in, really sink in. I had to tell myself what I was seeing. Walter…this was Walter…lying on the ground in front of me in a pool of his own blood. Walter was dead. Really, truly dead. This time. Not like before. He wasn't coming back in the next room, or on the next staircase. There weren't any more rooms or staircases. This was _it_.

Dead.

_Dead!_

Walter was dead.

* * *

It was such a shock to me that at first I didn't notice the ground moving under my feet. Then the revolver fell from his lifeless fingers and clattered along the floor for a few inches, and I realized that the whole place was shaking. It was rumbling like the end of the world, and the ceiling could collapse at any moment. 

A cry came from the other side of the arena.

_Eileen!_

She was tottering in those goddamn high heels (always the heels), wobbling two steps above the pool of blood. That knocked some sense back into me. We had to get the hell out of there, and _fast_. But there was no escape…I'd seen that as I was running around. There was no door, no way out but through the grinding gears, and that sure as hell wasn't the way that I wanted either of us to take.

I ran full throttle for the platform. She reached for me, and I grabbed her around the waist and lifted her off of the steps not a moment too soon, for as soon as her feet were on the ground again the steps splintered and cracked and fell into the pool. The blades ground them to toothpicks in a second.

"What are we going to do?" she yelled.

"There's no exit," I shouted back.

"You mean, we're_ trapped_ here?"

My eye caught the shadows under the platform. I grabbed her hand and pulled both of us underneath, away from the falling debris. "Curl up," I yelled in her ear. I wrapped myself around and over her, to shelter her as best I could. We closed our eyes and shook together as the room fell to pieces around our ears.

The second to last thing I remember hearing was her voice in my ear, low and laughing.

"Nice dancing out there."

I laughed too, and this time it was completely genuine. I could do that now. My work was done.

"Any time."

Then, the last thing…the sound of cracking and splintering wood over and around me. I braced for the impact…

I don't remember anything after that.


	38. Home

I was waking up slowly. A bright light was shining in my face, and I kept my eyes closed against it. An unfamiliar sensation assaulted my ears and for a moment, I thought that I had been transported to another of Walter's insane universes.

_Not again!_

I reached for my axe, and felt only air by my side. It was gone. I had nothing, actually. No nutrition sludge, no bullets, no guns. My pockets were completely empty. Nothing. I was defenseless against this…

…_silence?_

Then it all started to come back to me. Walter was dead. So, this couldn't be another hellish world with ghosts in it. There weren't any left. And wherever I was, it didn't feel right in ways I was too groggy to figure out. Something was warming me, too…something familiar but nearly forgotten after all of this time.

_Sunlight? What the..._

Then, my nose came back online, and I realized that the burning sensation in my nostrils, the stench of death that had been a part of me for so long, was also gone, replaced by the pungent scent of fresh…

…_garbage._

I cracked open one eye, and then another. The smell should have been enough to clue me in to where I was, but it wasn't. I was sprawled, face-up, on top of a warm mound of heavy black plastic bags, several feet off of the ground. Above me, a square metal pipe gaped widely, with bits of random crud hanging off of it and threatening to drop onto me at any moment. To my left was a familiar-looking brick wall, and to my right were a set of double doors and a row of windows…and an older woman in a white coat sitting on her couch in the comfort of her apartment, watching TV.

If you've been there, you know exactly where I was. I was at the bottom end of the South Ashfield Heights trash chute, in the dumpster underneath, on top of bags of paper plates and trays from frozen dinners and who knows what else. Looked like it was actually working this week, too. The dumpster was filled almost to overflowing, and I was resting on bags piled to several inches above its edge. But after everything that had happened, the stink of fermenting banana peels was like perfume to my nose. I inhaled deeply, and briefly considered lying there for the rest of time, soaking up the sun. That was all I would ever need again. But from the looks of things, it was sometime before mid-morning, just before the sun would start casting shadows on this courtyard and the dumpster I was in, and I knew that my idyll wouldn't last. Couldn't last.

I sat up slowly and carefully, and looked around. All quiet. Good. I turned to climb down off of the pile, but my arm gave way on the slippery plastic and I slid down the bags and crashed to the ground between the dumpster and the building. Fortunately, Frank had been considerate enough of his tenants to attempt to hide the chute behind some bushes, and so when old Nurse Rachael stared out of the window to see what the noise was, I was hidden behind a thick hedge. There were a few bags on the ground too…I hadn't been the only thing falling recently, it seemed. So, she shook her head and turned back to her program, and I untangled myself, got to my feet, brushed myself off and began to walk…

…and damn me if I hadn't managed to hurt myself in the fall. How stupid is that? Survived being shot and bludgeoned and bitten, having my bones broken and my heart ripped out of my chest by ghosts and my guts blown out onto the dirt of the forest, and everything else that I'd been through…and now here I was, hobbling away from the dumpster with a sore bicep and _something_ pulled in my groin. Or, maybe I still had the hole in my arm from before and had just managed to cripple myself. Like I said, I'm not the most coordinated guy. Whatever. Hurt like hell either way, but I'd had worse.

In front of me was the tiny little parking lot that we had. Each apartment got one space, and if you were a two-car family you were out of luck. Then again, Ashfield's public transport was usually pretty good (my earlier experiences that day notwithstanding), and if you were a two-car family you could probably afford to live somewhere else. As I shuffled along, I looked around for a familiar gray shape.

_Ah. There it is. At least the old truck is still here. Hopefully, I can drive myself to the hospital…_

I smacked myself upside the head with my good arm. Moron. Like I was carrying my car keys. Hell, I didn't even have any ID on me. Going back for either probably wasn't an option, in my current state. Well, at least I wasn't going to get pulled over. I'd have to…

A small red car was parked next to my old gray truck. When you live in a small building, you get to know who drives what, and that little red hatchback reminded me of

_Eileen!_

Where was she? Had she…oh God. After the ceiling fell in on us, what had happened to her? Had she…

I forgot about the truck, forgot about my keys. I had to find out. Was Eileen OK? Had she gotten out, too? It was daytime now, so a few hours must have passed…they had to have found her by now, one way or another. How could I find out?

My eye caught the yellow caution tape around the subway entrance. There was a single police car sitting just past the corner, and two men who looked like detectives were standing by the car, talking.

_They're police. I can ask them. They would know._

I turned the corner of the parking lot and headed up the sidewalk. The one facing my direction stopped talking to his companion, and then they were both staring at me as if I'd just landed from another planet. And in a way, I suppose I had.

Then, they were running toward me. Why? Oh…I guess I looked a little weird, all dirty and limping like that.

Mouths moving. Jabbering…I couldn't hear what they were saying. I squinted at the mouth of the one on my right, but I couldn't read his lips. _Wish they'd speak up._ Then, the world started spinning, and I felt them grab me under the arms. Just like I'd grabbed…

_Eileen…_

The question would have to wait for later, I realized. I was fading fast. _Have to…tell them…_

"Henry…Townshend…Room 302…"

Oh, almost forgot.

"Hospital…"

My head must have fallen backwards, because the sun was in my eyes again, blinding me. And then it disappeared into blackness. I was falling…

* * *

…and I landed on something soft and smooth. But my head was all fuzzy, and I couldn't open my eyes. I couldn't move much at all, actually. What was wrong with me? My mouth was dry, too…

I swam just below consciousness, rising up and then falling back down, over and over again. It was an eternity before I managed to force one eyelid open. Maybe I am Hercules after all. It took several seconds for me to be able to focus, and then I had a good look around. At first, it was blindingly bright, and in the second it took my eyes to focus, it occurred to me that maybe I'd... but no.

Everything around me was white…white walls, white curtains, white bed standing a few feet above the floor, white sheets tucked in inside the metal rails that fenced me in on either side. An IV stand was there, too, with something in a bag that was running down through a plastic tube into my arm, dripping into me, slowly. There was a table next to me, with a lamp on it, and a little bouquet of flowers wrapped in plastic rested next to the lamp. They were pink and green and moist-looking.

_Who the hell...flowers? Alive and fresh, not dead and dried-up like the ones in the hospital…_

_Hospital. This is a hospital room._

My brain wasn't working very well at all, so that's as far as I got just then. Nice, clean, sterile hospital room. White, white, and white. Even down to my old, soft cotton hospital gown and the sheets stretched tight across my hips. I was glad for those, actually, considering that as far as I could tell that was all that was covering me below the gown. Ugh. The thought of not having pants on scared the bejeezus out of me.

_I'm too sleepy...head full of fuzz...what did they do to me?_

Then, I realized that I was probably at St. Jerome's. That was the closest hospital to my apartment, remember? So, that was probably where they'd taken me. Yeah. The same St. Jerome's that I'd been wandering through less than a day before, the same one that had lost Eileen's bag and room key and where I'd seen and smelled and _killed _things that no hospital should ever...

There was a noise outside the door, and I froze. Any moment now, one of those gray Amazons with the pipe fixation would come through the door, and I was stuck in bed with no pants on and no way of defending myself. I was a sitting duck. My mind raced as my eyes scanned the room. There was no time to get out of bed. I could pull the needle out of my arm and use it to stab, or I could try to grab the IV stand…but that was all I had within reach. If I could shake off the brain fuzz and actually_ move_ in the first place, and who knew if that was possible. I was screwed.

Then, the sound faded and disappeared, and I was left alone. The only thing I heard was the pounding of the blood past my ears. Of course there weren't going to be bloodstained walls and undead things and halls full of possessed wheelchairs here. That was all gone, as gone as Walter was, and they couldn't threaten me ever again. The images were harder to erase, but I somehow managed to grip the bars on either side of the bed to ground myself, and I eventually pushed the panic down to a manageable level.

Still, I had to do something. Anybody could walk in here at any time, and do anything they wanted to me, because I was too doped up to react. That wasn't going to happen to me again. Oh, no. Never again. I managed to get my free hand over to the IV, and ripped the tape and needle out of my flesh. As I moved my hand back I felt something heavy wrapped around my arm. My other hand touched the stiffness. _A bandage. _I remembered then, the pain in my arm and the pull in my groin. By rights, I should be in pain now, but I couldn't feel a thing.

_Of course not. I'm doped up. Too doped up to feel a bullet wound and a muscle pull…and too doped up to think straight. Shit._

I fought hard to clear my head of the painkillers that they'd been pumping into me. I couldn't afford to be out of it then, no. Not ever again. There was a time, once, when I was content to drink myself into a happy haze now and then, just as a break from the boredom, but now...now I didn't think that would ever happen again.

There were going to be a lot of things that could never be allowed to happen again. Not if I had anything to say about it.

I lay there for about ten minutes or so, letting the haze in my head dissipate and watching the sunlight streaming through the window. It came in clearly, brightly, with no interruptions. No motes of dust in the air, no streaks on the glass, nothing. This place was as sterile as they came. Completely different from the other St. Jerome's. It was hard to forget, though...so hard…

I forced my mind back to my current situation. I was by myself here, which was a nice break – I _really_ wasn't in the mood for small talk just then – but it confused me that they'd seen fit to give me a private room. No wallet, no proof of ID, never mind insurance, so why did they think that I could pay for it? I _knew_ that I couldn't. Even if I still _had_ a job (and after being absent from work for almost a week without being able to call in, I wasn't sure if I did), there was no way that my crappy insurance could cover enough of this…

_Dammit, that's unimportant now. I have the rest of my life to be in debt. I need to figure out what to do next._

More information. That was it. I needed more information. I grabbed the rail on the window side of my bed and slowly lowered it as quietly as I could. Then, I swung my legs over the side, gripped the IV stand with my good hand, and hauled myself to my feet. Good. I could stand up, at least. I was still wobbly, but I should be able to walk slowly...and yes, there_ was_ a breeze across my backside. I hate hospitals.

…and there was the faint pain in my groin. I had to move quickly, before the painkillers wore off completely. There was a map of the floor by the door, with a big green "you are here" arrow on it and clearly marked emergency exits. I was in a room in what looked like a seldom-traveled area, far away from the elevators and central desk. There were only two rooms at the end of this hall, actually, next to the stairwell.

_Two rooms. Two. Maybe…just maybe..._

I put my ear to the door. Nothing. I opened the door silently and peered down the hall. Nothing. I hadn't heard anything for a few minutes, actually. No reason to check up on me frequently. As far as they were concerned, I'd been asleep for hours, and would probably be all afternoon and into the night. No need to enlighten anybody otherwise. I rummaged through the cabinets and drawers until I found my clothes. They were still as dirty as hell, even though I was clean. Someone had put them in a plastic bag. Maybe the police were going to pick them up as evidence or something. Well, they were all I had. She wouldn't think anything of it. I pulled my clothes on as quickly as I could. Gotta say, having the old armor back on felt so, so good. I felt bolder, more like myself. Whatever that meant now.

Just as I was buckling my belt, my eye caught the little bouquet of pink flowers left by God only knows who...maybe a soft-hearted nurse or somebody.

_That's why we're on this isolated hallway. They're keeping us away from people. Eileen's the last known Walter Sullivan victim, and I...well, either they think that I'm one too, or that I've been killing all of these people myself. Looks like at least one person thinks I'm innocent. Or, maybe she's a serial-killer groupie. Heh._

Still, I picked up the bouquet in the interests of verisimilitude and slipped out into the hallway (_No police. Guess I got the benefit of the doubt_). I straightened up, pushed as much pain and fuzziness from my mind as I could, took a deep breath and knocked on the next door as if nothing was wrong.

"Come in," she called.

And there she was, resting in bed. Her smile lit up the room, and her eyes – both of them – looked happy to see me. She looked fine...just fine. Almost as if nothing had ever happened. I was worried that she'd be in bad shape, that I'd have to fake a smile, but as soon as I saw her clear skin and calm expression that worry melted away. There wasn't a mark on her as far as I could see. I felt a stupid grin spread across my face.

I was only there for a few minutes. I couldn't tell you what we talked about. I wish I could, but all I remember is giving her the flowers and her saying something about getting dinner later when she got out. I couldn't give her my full attention, because all the time I was keeping an eye on the door. _Any minute now_ a phalanx of doctors and nurses and security would burst in and throw me to the ground and carry me off and that would be it. Time was precious. So, I talked to her and held her hand and thought of all the things that I couldn't tell her that I wanted to.

I hope she didn't notice. I don't think she did. She even asked me what I was going to do now. Good question, as it turned out. I hadn't the foggiest. Whatever it was, I had to get the hell out of there...

_And out of 302. I can't stay there. Never again. Never. I'll never be able to sleep in my bed again. Never will be able to look at those walls or that fridge or…the door. Not without remembering. Got to get out. I'll deal with the rest later._

The door opened, and a nurse peeked in. I nearly jumped out of my skin, but I just held Eileen's hand and kept my face turned away from the door and stayed as still as I could. I guess the nurse didn't recognize me, though. For whatever reason, she must not have known who I was. She just told us that visiting hours were over, smiled, and left. And, after a minute, so did I.

Leaving Eileen in that hospital was one of the hardest things that I've ever had to do.

* * *

Down the back stairs, out the door, and I was free again. There were several police cars in the parking lot, but they were empty, and the back fire door was deserted. Then it occurred to me that they might be there because of what had happened to Eileen and me. Now that I looked, the lot did seem pretty full…and I could hear some crowd noise coming from the front of the building. Reporters, maybe. No wonder there were so many police cars here. Guess they had been so intent on keeping people from getting in that they hadn't bothered to stop anyone trying to get _out_.

Slowly, back to the apartment along quiet streets and back alleys. I moved as quickly as I could on the leg that was starting to hurt again, but even then it seemed to take forever. Finally, I saw the familiar outline of South Ashfield Heights at the next corner. To the rock under which I'd hidden spare keys for the apartment so long ago...and keys to the truck, too. Hell, I'd forgotten about those. Into the truck, then, and to work to grab some empty cardboard boxes from behind the building. Thank God nobody saw me. Then, back home to pack up and get the hell out of there.

_I'll find a hotel or motel somewhere. Something cheap. Doesn't have to be anything special, just as long as it has a door that locks and windows that open and a phone that works. I'll call Frank and Eileen and tell them where I am, so that somebody knows, and Frank had __**better**__ give me back my goddamn deposit._

The painkillers were wearing off, all right. I had to go up the stairs one step at a time. It was hard hauling the boxes up with one good arm, but I managed somehow.

_Strange...no police around. Guess they did their thing and left...makes getting the hell out that much easier, though._

* * *

As soon as I walked through my door, with my arms full of boxes, I realized that I'd forgotten about something…

I don't remember if I promised the whole story at the beginning. If I did, I'm sorry, because I'm going to have to break that promise. What happened next...

No. I can't talk about that now. I'm sorry. Actually, I'm not. If there's any part of this that is really nobody's business but mine, that is. And...and I'm still sorting it all out, and I wouldn't even know where to start. Even if I wanted to tell you, which I don't.

Another time, perhaps.

Another time.

The next thing that I remember after that is waking up here.


	39. Now

**A/N: Thanks to everyone who has stuck with the story to the end. It's been great to read your comments and discuss all of this with you, and your feedback has been a big help.**

**No, I haven't set out to leave you hanging with the end of the previous chapter. What happened after Henry walked through his door ****(and what happens after the end of this story) ****will be the subject of the follow-up story to this one. I'll start posting that soon.**

**Enough from me. Here's the end of Henry's story.**

* * *

These days, I spend my time very, very quietly, just writing and remembering. There's not much else to do here. It's just you, me, and a couple of pencils. Don't get me wrong, though. I do like it, sort of. It's clean and quiet and the food is halfway decent. Fridays are the best days, and the food is one of the reasons why, because Fridays are pasta days, and the chef has a way with linguini that you wouldn't believe.

It's a little unsettling, too, but not for the obvious reasons. It's more that it's like being in some kind of limbo. The walls and floors are kept spotless and so are the bedsheets and blankets and the blue cotton pants and shirts that they give me every day. It seems almost unnatural. No…it _is_ unnatural. But at least it's predictable, the same thing every day, and it's safe. Very safe. Everybody's very kind and helpful and they leave me alone most of the time and they don't say a damn thing when I...

I don't do that much any more. When I first got here, I was in pretty bad shape, but it still took several of them to hold me down. After that, I spent my days trying to figure out how to get out. I've gotten past that, but it took a while. They had to shoot me full of God-knows-what to knock me out each night. But even then…even when I can't move or see or do anything, I still know what's going on around me. It's eerie…like a dream, but as you might guess that doesn't freak me out any more. I welcome it. It's better than sleep. Like I said before, I never want to be out of it, never again.

I wish they would, though. You know. Say something about _it_. It's as if nobody wants to acknowledge that something happened. The elephant in the corner of my room is so enormous that we all have trouble squeezing around it day after day…not that this room is that large to start with. But at the same time, not a day goes by that the doctor doesn't ask me if I want to talk about it. Well, I don't. Not to him, anyway. They're welcome to try to pry information out of me, but that's all. They're not going to be getting a damn thing, that's for sure. Because I want to get the HELL out of here someday, someday soon, and if I say a single word about any of it…not going to happen. If you weren't there, you wouldn't believe it. It still seems almost unbelievable to me, and I lived it. I can't expect them to. I'm not talking at all.

So for now, the answer to that question from way back at the beginning is simple. I'm Henry Townshend, and as far as the state is concerned, I'm batshit crazy. Loopy. Over the moon. Several cards short of a full deck. I won't talk, won't tell them about it, won't give them a damn thing. So, I must be crazy, right?

Crazy, maybe, but patient. I can wait them out. Maybe they can hold me here forever...but somehow I don't think they will. Was it all over the news the next day? I didn't see it, but I can just imagine the headlines. "Serial Killer Murders Four, Nearly Takes Over Apartment" and other such crap? Well, people aren't going to forget. Somebody's going to start asking questions, wondering where the guy who took Walter Sullivan out is these days, and once they find out that the only reason I'm here is that I'm not talking, I'll be sprung from this place.

Or so I tell myself.

Sometimes, I do wonder if people have forgotten so soon. I lose track of time easily here, but I think it's been a few weeks since everything happened, and that's enough time for people to forget, to move on to the next scandal or crime or whatever grabs the headlines. I know I used to.

That's all gone now. I have no idea what Frank has done with my apartment. I have a vague memory of…of what happened before they brought me here…something about blocking the door and not letting anybody in, ever, again. I really hope that's what he did. So I don't know…I don't know about that.

But I do know about me. I'm not the old Henry from before, that soft, naïve camera-boy who just lived his life day to day, blithely ignoring whatever it was out there that he didn't want to deal with. I can't push it all away any longer. No. Never again. Not after everything that's happened. That's been the hardest part of telling you all this, by the way. Not the remembering…I've told you everything I remember, and I remember most of that as clearly as if it happened yesterday. Naturally. Walter made sure that I would, just as he made sure that I could see and hear everything he laid out in front of me. And now that I can look back on the whole thing, I understand things that were going on right in front of me, things that I didn't have time to think about then but that are as clear as day now. Things that…no. Down that path is…well, madness.

The hardest part has been remembering what I was thinking and feeling when it actually happened. It doesn't make any sense to me now, the way I reacted and dealt with it all, unless I remember who I used to be. He's dead, that old Henry, as dead as Richard and Cynthia and the rest of them. He started dying two or three days after Walter blocked the windows for the first time, as his neatly ordered little hermit cave started falling apart before his eyes, and he died completely along with Cynthia. Maybe that's why I felt her death so hard…it was mine, too. Everything since then has been a rebuilding into a newer, stronger shape, by necessity. I don't know if I would want to go back to being that Henry even if I could. _Walter's_ Henry. Moot point, anyway. He's gone, and now I'm my own man. Whatever that means.

* * *

Mom doesn't come to visit. Nor does my father. I haven't figured out yet if that's a good thing. There's so much that I want to tell them…but that would only open up another can of worms. And in the end, it doesn't change anything. So it's probably just as well. But you know who does? Eileen, of all people. I'd think that after what happened, she'd never want to see my face again. It's got to bring back too many bad memories. But no, she comes here every Saturday like clockwork. She's here first thing in the morning, bright and early with a smile on her face, even though she must have gotten up before the crack of dawn to make the drive from Ashfield. She brings books and sits with me all day, reading to me and telling me about her life. I've recognized a few of the books as mine, but she hasn't said anything about that. Not that I mind at all. I've read those ones before, of course, but hearing her voice reading them makes them seem new again.

That's the biggest reason that Fridays are my favorite days, because when it's Friday, that means that Eileen will be here tomorrow. (Saturdays are events, not days, so they don't count on the favorites list.) Her life's actually pretty interesting, you know...she has a job she likes and friends that she hangs out with and she even likes the same TV programs as me. It's absolutely fascinating, really. The kind of life that I need to start living. She's everything to me, the reason that I can make it from day to day. Maybe someday...

Maybe someday I'll be able to thank her for all of this. It's what I live for. But right now, I can't open my mouth to speak. It's too dangerous. Too unreliable. What if I try to say "thanks" and what comes out is "two-headed babies and pickaxes and ghosts in my living room"? Bye-bye last chance at freedom...hello to white walls and barred windows and hospital meals for the rest of my life. No thanks. No linguini is _that_ good. I can't even talk to her about it…they might be monitoring us. She hasn't brought any of it up, not once, but they probably told her not to. And anyway, that's how I got you, my little notebook…to write what I needed, since I'm not about to say it. So it's worked out so far. Can't let them know that there's anything more in here than "What's for dinner tonight?" written over and over, though. I'll have to tear out some more pages and use those, and keep you well hidden.

Paranoid, Henry? Damn right. I am, now. I have plenty of reason to be. I nearly flipped when I saw the notebook they gave me…you. A plain red notebook. For a moment, I thought that they _knew_, knew about the red notebook that Joseph had left me, knew about the bloody notes, knew about all of it…but then I realized that no, they couldn't have, and as long as I kept my mouth shut they never would. Just an ordinary red notebook, nothing fancy. But now you're my reason for being. You, and Eileen. You're the reason they now think that I can sleep on my own. I still can't, of course, but I've gotten good enough at faking it that they leave me alone, and so after lights-out and between the night rounds I can stay up all night writing in you. It's taken a long, long time to write all of this, many hours over many nights, but what the hell else have I got to do in here?

* * *

When I get to feeling too negative about things, like I did just now, I look out of my window at the trees. That's what I'm doing as I write this. There are trees in the garden behind my room, and the leaves are turning their usual fall colors; I can see them by the glow of the streetlights. The oranges and reds and greens are so aggressively_ alive_, unlike me, unlike everything here. Somewhere out there, beyond the garden and the damn _sterility_ of this place, there are people like that, too, people who are living their lives and going about their days happily. Just like I used to watch them do from my window. I'd like to think that a little bit of the reason they can still do that is because of me. That's enough. I thought that the tradeoff would be death…and I'd have been OK with that. But I'm here instead. My own personal Purgatory. Whatever. It's the bargain I made, although the choice was only partly mine, and if I'm here forever, then so be it. Eileen can still live her life, and _she_ understands. That's enough. It will have to be.

Sometimes on a sunny day, the sun shines directly into my window, and this room is almost blindingly bright. I'll remember the white light in that room in the other hospital, so long ago…and I'll stretch my hand out, just as I did then, trying to reach it. I was wishing for salvation then, I think…but now, I can feel the warmth on my skin, and I know that that's all that I'll ever get out of it.

You know what's the funniest thing? Before, I would have been happy to stay in my room forever and never be bothered with anybody or anything outside my four walls. I could have changed that at any time, could have gotten up off the couch and walked out of my door and learned how to live, but I never wanted to. I didn't know…I didn't know that I would end up nearly giving my life to preserve something that I never appreciated before. Now that I really care about what's going on out there, in that world that I used to take for granted, I'm locked up in here. Heh. Henry Townshend, philanthropist. What the hell, huh? Like I said, things are different now.

But…

But still, every day, it happens. Sooner or later, I find myself thinking about _him_. We crossed paths so infrequently, a handful of times, but I remember every time as clearly as if it had happened five minutes ago. And, now that I've finished telling you about everything that happened, gone over everything in my mind from start to finish, I know that I remember those moments the best. I couldn't tell you why. I don't_ know_ why. Maybe because those were the times when I felt closest to finding out what the hell was going on, when it was as if I could unravel the whole thing with the right word or action. Never worked out that way, of course. Until the very end, there was never a second when he didn't have me right where he wanted me…

…but I was _there_. Inside his memories, inside his mind, part of his deepest wants and fears and dreams. That was _why_ I was there. It's as if…

It's not right. I should remember _them_ more clearly, not him. Not as if everything isn't burned into my memory forever, but…they died alone, but for me. I don't want to die like that. _I don't want to die like that!_ And…and all I can think about is him, God damn it. It's not right.

…as if. I need to finish that thought, if I'm going to be honest. It's as if I _was_ him, in a way. He showed me the things he remembered, indirectly and directly, the loneliness and the sadness and the horrible numbing bleakness that shaped him into what he'd become. He took me through that, all of it, to try to get me to see things his way.

And in the end, when all was said and done and we stood there staring each other down by the pool of blood, I knew what he knew, saw what he saw, and understood what he wanted. That loneliness, that longing, that _need_…I'd known it, not as he had of course, but something like it. I felt as if...this is going to sound really weird, but it was as if I was looking at my brother. I never had a brother, so I don't know if that's right, but I don't know any other way to describe it. I was facing my brother, who knew me better than anyone else ever could, who had always called the shots while I tagged along behind, who had gotten me to do things and think things I'd never have thought or done on my own, and who had dominated me for as long as I'd been alive – and who had finally gone too far. Nobody else had ever known him like I knew him then, and looking at him felt like looking in a mirror. _That's_ why he…why I can't stop thinking about him now.

And…and, at the end, I lifted that axe against him, the one man who understood me better than anyone else ever had, and all that I could think about was…_beef stew._

_Inhuman killing machine._ That's what Joseph had called him. What he had become, what I became in the end. All by design. Yes, I think maybe I understand better now. Maybe it's for the best. Me being in here, locked up, out of circulation. It's not where I want to be, but it's where I have to be. I am the last remnant of his plan, the last person alive corrupted by his touch. It can truly be at an end.

Eileen is still around, of course. But she was innocent…I am not.

* * *

I've gone back and reread everything. Everything I've written here. I'm rambling now, but I started out rambling, so at least I'm consistent that way. And I think that I've been as honest about things as I could. I've told you things that I've never told anybody, ever, and that I would never tell anybody else. I can trust you. I don't even know if you or anybody could give a damn about what's going on in my head now, but there it is.

So here's another…the hardest yet.

Maybe a week ago, I was…I was having another of my episodes. It took four people this time, Andy and the doctor and two others. You know, when I get out of here (_when, when…not if, when…_), I'm going to have to do something for Andy. He's the one who looks after me, the one who puts up with me, and I've put him through more trouble than anybody should have to deal with. I don't mean to, but sometimes…

Anyway, he ended up behind me, pinning my arms, and as they rolled up my sleeve and wiped the inside of my arm down with disinfectant again I heard his voice in my ear.

"Henry, it's OK. Just calm down a little. You've got nothing to worry about," he said. His voice was kind but firm, same as always. In another life, I'd have trusted him. Then, he laughed softly.

"You've been to hell and back already, right? Even though you won't talk about it, I can tell. You've been through more than anyone can imagine. So what could _you_ be afraid of, anyway?"

That's the real problem, you see. They think – they all think – that once you've been through what I've been through, that you shouldn't ever be afraid of anything, ever again. You've come out of Hell, they say. You've conquered death, they say. Nothing can be worse than that, right? They don't understand. Nobody could understand. Not even Eileen…she didn't have to do what I did. I'm not saying that she didn't work hard or do her part…she did, and so much more. But it's more that…well, it was on me to get us out of there, and the decisions were mine to make, and the things that I said and did and…

It wasn't the same for her as it was for me. And now, nothing will ever be the same again for either of us. How could it be? How does she _do it?_

Henry, what are you afraid of? What's left to fear?

Hah. I…

I fear…

I fear nothing outside of myself. Let's leave it at that. Yeah, I'm too damn chicken to talk about it further. But I'm not that person any more, and the other side is a very, very long way from home…wherever this is.

* * *

I've been spending some of my time mentally replaying music. Anything, really. When I was growing up, I listened to a good deal of classical music and some classic rock, but when I went to college my freshman-year roommate played all sorts of stuff, and it rubbed off on me. Anyway, he introduced me to Led Zeppelin. Leslie ragged on me for that, that first time that she came by my room and saw my music collection. My tapes were "obsolete", I think she said, and only high school kids listened to Zep. Whatever. But a favorite song keeps playing in my head as I'm writing this, and these words are demanding to be put onto paper:

_Yours is the cloth, mine is the hand that sews time  
His is the force that lies within  
Ours is the fire, all the warmth we can find  
He is a feather in the wind_

Sorry. That had to come out. No idea why.

Anyway, all I have right now is the past. No, that's wrong. Even my past isn't really mine any more. The future…I don't think about the future. But I still have my memories. So that's why I'm writing all of this here. I don't know if anybody will ever read this, but that doesn't matter. I have to tell somebody. There's a record, now, of what really happened that day, and now it's done. Make of it what you will, if anything. Like I said, I don't know if you'll believe this or laugh at it as the ramblings of a guy off of his rocker...but beyond a point, it doesn't matter.

I'm done rambling now.

Most cordially yours, for what good it will do you,

Henry Michael Townshend  
Brookhaven Hospital, Room S3  
Silent Hill  
September 2004

Alive.


End file.
